A little more than four weeks after he waived his preliminary hearing on strangulation-related charges for throwing a woman to the ground and stomping on her neck multiple times, Drew Houseknecht stalked the victim in Muncy Creek Township, following her into Muncy Township to a parking lot of a business along Route 220, where he parked in front of her, got out of his pickup truck, opened her car door and tried to pull her out of the vehicle, state police alleged in an affidavit.

The woman, who already had a protection from abuse order filed against the 43-year-old Hughesville man, tried “to talk with him in a calm manner in an attempt to de-escalate the situation,” a trooper wrote in the court document.

During this stalking and confrontation, which occurred on Sept. 11, Housekencht took the woman’s cellphone and told her that if she “dropped the strangulation-related charges against him, incidents like this can be prevented,” it was alleged in the affidavit. The woman fled Houseknecht in her car and managed to get to a relative’s home to call state police. She returned to the parking lot, where she was interviewed by two state troopers. While there, she found her cellphone “shattered”, police said. The woman told them that there had been “similar incidents like this in the past” following the strangulation episode, but she “did not report them due to her level of fear of Houseknecht,” police added.

Initial efforts to locate Houseknecht were unsuccessful, but he was taken into custody the next day at an undisclosed location and arraigned before District Judge Kirsten Garnder on a felony charge of intimidation of a witness-victim and two misdemeanor charges, stalking and criminal mischief. He remains jailed in the Lycoming County Prison in lieu of $50,000 bail.

Houseknecht was first arrested hours after a violent Aug. 1 assault on the woman in the 1900 block of East Third Street. He was jailed initially on state police charges of stalking, simple assault, false imprisonment, theft, disorderly conduct and harassment after being unable to post $85,000 bail. He waived the charges on Aug. 11. The bail was reduced to $50,000, and he was released through pre-trial services, formerly known as supervised bail, on Aug. 20.