A Franklin Park police officer who thought he was responding to a car crash with injuries Saturday instead found a man had beaten his elderly father, according to a criminal complaint.
Franklin Park police charged Andrew Jeffrey Starz, 44, of Ohio Township with a first-degree felony charge of aggravated assault and a misdemeanor count of simple assault.
According to the complaint, officers responded to the reported crash in the area of Reis Run Road and Oakleaf Lane around 6:45 p.m. Saturday.
Starz was a passenger in the car. The complaint says he and his father were traveling on Reis Run near Clover Hill Drive when Starz started hitting his father on the right side of his face, causing significant injuries to his right eye and a large cut on his right eyebrow.
Police said there was a large amount of blood on the driver’s seat, steering wheel, driver’s door, driver’s window and the road under the driver’s door, the complaint states. There was also blood and abrasions on Starz’s hands.
Asked what had happened, Starz told officers that they had been drinking at Penn Brewery in Pittsburgh. He said his dad was driving slow and “like an idiot,” so he started hitting him, the complaint states.
Starz told another officer that he had “nudged” his father in the face because he was drifting off the road, but later admitted to punching him in the face, the complaint states.
Because of the severity of his injuries, medics took Starz’s father to Allegheny General Hospital, the complaint states.
Starz did not have an attorney listed in court records.
Starz was arraigned Sunday and sent to the Allegheny County Jail on $3,000 bail. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 7 before District Judge Giuseppe Rosselli.