These were the top crime stories in Butler County during 2020:

Woman arrested for fatally stabbing boyfriend

Shaina Ann Helen Grush, 31, was charged with homicide for allegedly stabbing her boyfriend, Robert Wagner, on June 14 in an apartment on West Jefferson Street. District Judge B.T. Fullerton decided to hold the charge of felony general criminal homicide against Grush over for court at a preliminary hearing in August. A witness allegedly told Butler police the couple was arguing when Grush pulled a knife with an 8-inch blade out of the kitchen drawer and then allegedly thrust it into the left side of Wagner’s chest. Wagner, who was breathing when he was transported by ambulance to Butler Memorial Hospital, was pronounced dead around 2:40 a.m. the next day in the hospital’s emergency room.

Two women die when car crashes into CoGos

A preliminary hearing for Diane E. Read, 37, of Middlesex Township, who is accused of vehicular homicide while driving drunk in a May 17 crash that killed two of her friends, is set for January.

Read faces two felony counts each of homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, homicide by vehicle, involuntary manslaughter and DUI in the deaths of her passengers and friends, Kimberly Young, 39, and Patricia Collins, 36.

Middlesex Township police charged Read Dec. 11 following a nearly seven-month investigation into the crash. The three women were neighbors on Dwellington Drive. Police said the women had been at Read’s home for a get-together where alcohol was consumed, and they left the neighborhood in Read’s family car around 12:10 a.m. Read allegedly ran a stop sign at the intersection of Dwellington Drive and Route 8, and crashed into the front of the former CoGo’s store, which was closed. No one was in the store.

Young, the front-seat passenger, was pronounced dead at the scene. Collins, who was unresponsive in the back seat, was taken to UPMC Presbyterian hospital in Pittsburgh, where she was pronounced dead later that day.

Feds help break up Philadelphia-to-Butler drug pipeline

Ricardo Glenn, 28, a drug dealer in a Philadelphia-to-Butler drug ring who formerly lived in Butler, was sentenced to nearly five years in federal prison Dec. 17. He helped a network move drugs from Philadelphia to Butler over the course of at least two years while he was under court supervision after a 2018 Philadelphia firearm conviction. Glenn, who was indicted alongside eight other defendants in June, pleaded guilty in July to conspiring to distribute controlled substances.

Between November 2019 and June, Pennsylvania State Police and the FBI conducted at least 15 controlled and undercover buys of fentanyl, heroin, acetylfentanyl, cocaine and crack cocaine from Glenn in or near Butler. He was arrested in a room at the Holiday Inn Express in Butler, where investigators found and seized nearly $7,500.

Man attacks sleeping ex-fiancee with hatchet

Dean J. Law, 29, of Apollo, Armstrong County, was charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, trespass and false identification to law enforcement after he was arrested June 9 at a farmhouse in Summit Township while police were tending to a woman who had a hatchet lodged in her forehead.

The hatchet penetrated the victim’s brain and left her blind in one eye, according to state police and court testimony. Police allege the defendant walked into the home on Bonniebrook Road shortly before 7 a.m., uninvited and unnoticed, and attacked the woman as she slept in her upstairs bedroom. He didn’t say a word, according to police, and left. Several family members were in the house at the time, and they eventually found out what happened. One of them called 911.

Number of arrests made at social justice protest in downtown Butler

Butler police arrested eight people June 1 during a protest over the death of George Floyd, a black man whose killing by police in Minneapolis on May 25 sparked riots in a number of cities nationwide.

The protest began about 2 p.m. on South Main Street in the area of the Butler County Courthouse. The protest ended about 9:45 p.m. and was mostly peaceful with occasional arguments between protesters and counterprotesters, police said.

Between 300 and 400 people gathered at the peak of the protest. About 8 p.m., a fight broke out between two protesters, which eventually led to the first arrests. Soon afterward, authorities decided to order all protesters to disperse.

Narcotics officers seize large amount of drugs at Butler apartment

Officers from the Butler County Drug Task Force and Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office Bureau of Narcotics Investigation arrested Desirae Feitl, 33, of Butler, and Quinzal S. Powell, 30, of Philadelphia, and seized $1,000, 1,121 stamp bags of suspected opioids, an additional $9,220 in cash, a half-dozen cellphones and a digital scale on Oct. 15 following a search of Feitl’s apartment on Pillow Street.

Investigators said Feitl was the target when the joint investigation began in November 2019, and Powell was identified as the source allegedly bringing her drugs from Philadelphia to sell.

Teen arrested for attempted murder, rape in attack of woman

Jackson Township police arrested Alex Lamont Boyden II, 18, of McKees Rocks, Allegheny County, on felony charges of attempted homicide, aggravated assault, rape, strangulation, theft and receiving stolen property following a May 23 incident in which he allegedly held a knife to a McKees Rocks woman’s neck, cut her on the hand, sexually assaulted her and choked her until she blacked out along a dead-end road in the township.

Boyden allegedly drove the victim, a friend, down a dirt/gravel road that stops at an embankment below the Interstate 79 off-ramp near Tollgate School Road, held a knife to her neck, cut her hand during a struggle, sexually assaulted her, threatened to kill her and strangled her.

Raid in Butler Township nets 11,000 stamp bags of opioids, $14,000

State police arrested Tammy L. Macefe, 51, on felony drug possession charges after 11,000 stamp bags of suspected heroin, suspected methamphetamine, pills and about $14,000 were seized from her home on Sept. 30.

Executing a search warrant at her home, police reportedly found 220 bricks of suspected heroin, six grams of suspected methamphetamine, 160 pills of amphetamine/dextroamphetamine, a digital scale, drug-packaging materials, a money counter and the currency.