A Butler County jury on Thursday, Aug. 17, rendered a split verdict in a one-day trial into a 2018 assault in Butler Township where a woman was pushed or jumped out of a moving vehicle.

The jury of six men and six woman found Robert Harding Vanscoy, 50, of Pittsburgh guilty of misdemeanor charges of making terroristic threats, recklessly endangering anther person and simple assault, but found him not guilty of a felony and a misdemeanor charge of aggravated assault.

Township police said Vanscoy pushed Michelle Kaiser out of a pickup truck, based on statements she and witnesses gave on the day of the incident Sept. 1, 2018, but on Thursday, she testified that she jumped out of the truck.

Kaiser told the jury she used heroin and crack cocaine that day and later met Vanscoy at a convenience store in Butler. She said he agreed to drive her to his then home in the city so she could collect her belongings.

After leaving his home, she said they were driving on Route 8 and got into an argument, and he refused to take her home. While they were in the truck, she said she asked Vanscoy to stop so she could use a restroom, and Vanscoy turned on to Vogel Road adjacent to the Sheetz on Route 8.

He slowed down and she opened the door and jumped out of the truck, and he kept driving, Kaiser said. She said Vanscoy did not open her door and push her out of the truck. She said she hit her head on the road.

“I was in shock,” Kaiser said.

She said blood was pouring from her head and her hands were “skinned to the bone.”

She said she doesn’t want Vanscoy to get in trouble and she doesn’t like to see anybody get in trouble or go to jail.

“I opened the door because I thought he was going to stop. Then he took off really fast,” Kaiser said.

She said she no longer uses drugs.

She said she and Vanscoy dated for five or six years until last year, but they aren’t dating now, and that he moved to Pittsburgh sometime after the incident. She said she hasn’t talked to or seen Vanscoy in over a year.

Under questioning by Assistant District Attorney Robert Zanella, she said she attended a court proceeding with Vanscoy a couple months ago and they have been talking on the phone. She also said Vanscoy asked her to change her testimony.

Kaiser left the courtroom after testifying and did not return to hear the jury’s verdict.

An employee who worked at the Sheetz testified that a woman stumbled into the store and was bleeding. She said the injured woman said her boyfriend pushed her out of a car.

A video taken inside the store that was played for jury showed Kaiser enter with one hand on her head and immediately sit down on the floor just inside the doorway. Another employee is shown helping the woman to a seating area and assisting her.

Township police Officer Rachel Dovidio testified that she was dispatched to the Sheetz for a report of a woman bleeding from her head. She said she arrived while emergency medical technicians were taking Kaiser to Butler Memorial Hospital.

She said the EMTs told her that Kaiser told them that her boyfriend pushed her out of a pickup truck. The EMTs reported Kaiser said she asked her boyfriend to let her out of the truck, he slowed down and she started to get out of the truck, but her boyfriend pushed her out of the truck and then sped off, Dovidio said.

Vanscoy did not report the incident, she said.

At the hospital, Dovidio said Kaiser told her that during the argument in the truck, Vanscoy threatened to take her to Pittsburgh and “make her disappear.”

The photos she took of Kaiser’s injuries at the hospital were displayed for the jury. The injuries included a cut above her left eye, and scrapes or “road rash” on her face, hands, arms and legs, Dovidio said.

Charges were filed against Vanscoy a few days later, and he was arrested in Pittsburgh by Pittsburgh police on Sept. 27, 2018, Dovidio said.

In closing arguments, public defender Charles Nedz said Kaiser was under the influence of drugs and had mental health issues at the time of the incident, but she is clean and sober now. He said the account of the incident that she testified to should be believed instead of the account she gave on the day of the incident.

Zanella, who read excerpts from a hospital report in which Kaiser reported she was thrown from a moving truck, said he believes Vanscoy and Kaiser are still dating.

He said Vanscoy left the area after the incident and was hiding in Pittsburgh when he was arrested.

“Those are the actions of a guilty man,” Zanella said.

He argued that the version of events Kaiser gave the day of the incident are credible because she repeated it to several people and didn’t have time to fabricate a different story.

Judge Timothy McCune scheduled sentencing Oct. 19, and ordered Vanscoy to be placed on house arrest until then.