Shooting suspect jailed
A Washington man was jailed Wednesday in connection with the alleged kidnapping and shooting of a man who survived being shot in the back just below the skull a day earlier in South Franklin Township.
District Judge Ethan Ward sent Keith Anthony Rosario, 26, to Washington County jail on a string of charges related to the shooting of Marcus Stancik, who told investigators he knew his captor because he had stayed a few nights at his residence.
Ward denied bond for Rosario after he told the suspect he faced serious charges in the case, including attempted homicide.
“They are just allegations,” Rosario said during his arraignment Wednesday afternoon.
“No matter what you say I am not changing my mind,” Ward said. “Bail is denied.”
The investigation began when a trooper was dispatched about 10:40 p.m. Tuesday to Cove Road where a gunshot was heard and a man was screaming for help, according to the affidavit supporting the criminal charges against Rosario, of 449 Ewing St.
Police found Stancik who said he knew the man who shot him by the nickname “Sin.”
The trooper was familiar with Sin, and he asked Stancik if he meant “Rosario, to which Stancik replied, ‘Yes Keith Rosario,'” police noted in the affidavit.
Stancik was treated at the scene and then transferred to Allegheny General Hospital, Pittsburgh, where troopers interviewed him a second time. Stancik said he had only known Sin for about a week and the suspect was from New York.
He said he was walking along Route 40 when a vehicle stopped and a man stepped outside of it and told him to get in the vehicle, court records show.
Stancik refused to get in the vehicle and it drove away. The vehicle returned about 15 minutes later while Stancik was walking in a nearby alley. Sin and another man got out of the vehicle and they allegedly assaulted Stancik and thew him in the vehicle, police stated in court records.
He said he was placed in the backseat between Rosario and another man, and then driven to Cove Road and shot in the back of his head, the record states.
Police did not list a motive for the crime or cite in court records how Stancik escaped from his alleged kidnappers.
A court official said police had said Stancik fell forward into a body of water after he was shot and he then swam away from the shooting scene.
No other arrest warrants were signed in the case Wednesday afternoon, according to the court.
Rosario also was charged with aggravated assault with a firearm, conspiracy to a kidnapping and an aggravated assault, kidnapping and aggravated assault.
The shooting of Stancik happened a month after Rosario told Washington police that he was shot at while he sat in his vehicle that was parked outside of his residence. He told city police he was about to drive somewhere about 10:45 p.m. Aug. 10 when a small, four-door sedan drove past him and shots were fired in his direction, striking his car. Police recovered five 9mm shell casings on the street. Rosario told police he did not want to pursue charges.
He also finished serving a 2 1/2-year sentence in state prison after pleading guilty in May 2015 to having an unlicensed .38-caliber handgun when shots were fired May 23, 2013, behind a bar in the 10 block of North Main Street in Washington.
Rosario also pleaded guilty to selling 1.7 grams of cocaine to a state police informant in Jollick Manor in Washington and to selling 6.7 grams of marijuana to an informant at a supermarket parking lot in 2011.