BUTLER TWP — A township man was arrested Wednesday after he allegedly threatened his girlfriend with a homemade weapon, cut his mother with a knife and punched his father during a family fracas.

The suspect, 28-year-old Joseph B. Moore, was already wanted on a warrant stemming from a suspected tire iron attack in Butler earlier this summer.

And, it turned out, Moore is also a wanted man out of Missouri, where he has a pending criminal case. The suspect is being held in Butler County Prison on $75,000 bail.

Butler Township police arrested Moore after they were called to his family’s house on Farmington Drive for a disturbance shortly after 3:30 p.m. Wednesday.

The defendant was gone by the time officers got there. Police, however, found three victims of his alleged wrath, according to court documents.

Investigators believe the disturbance began when Moore got angry with girlfriend Monica Zimmerman. He is accused of punching her in the head and later threatening to kill her with a homemade impact device.

Police described the device as being a heavy round object, about 14 inches long, wrapped with electrical tape and duct tape.

“If the weapon was used to hit a person,” a police affidavit said,” it would certainly have the velocity to break bones or break someone’s head open.”

When Russell Moore tried to stop his son, the defendant punched him and bent back his left thumb.

The fight soon spilled out onto the front lawn where Moore pulled out a knife and “made three slashing cuts across the left side of his own neck,” the affidavit said.

His mother, Charlotte Moore, moved in and took the knife away from her son but not without suffering a cut on her left index finger, police said. The injuries to all three victims were believed to be minor.

While officers were talking to those victims, Moore returned to the house and was arrested without further incident, police said.

District Judge Sue Haggerty arraigned the defendant on two counts each of aggravated assault and simple assault.

Haggerty also arraigned Moore on unrelated felony assault charges that Butler police filed against him four months ago.

According to that case, Moore on July 22 attacked David Watts, 28, of East Brady, Clarion County, with a tire iron in the parking lot of the Family Video shopping plaza.

The suspected attack left Watts with a large cut on his head. He was treated at Butler Memorial Hospital.

The next day, police obtained an arrest warrant for Moore.

Meanwhile, Butler Township police learned the defendant was wanted on a second arrest warrant, this one issued out of Pettis County in western Missouri. Moore is charged in that out-of-state warrant with resisting arrest.