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Ex-boxer faces more charges

FORD CITY — Troubled former lightweight boxing champ Paul Spadafora, already charged with putting a woman in a headlock at a bar, has been accused of holding a knife in front of another woman at a convenience store later that night.

Spadafora, known as The Pittsburgh Kid, has been charged by police in Manor Township in Armstrong County for a bizarre April 4 incident at a Sheetz convenience store, WTAE-TV first reported Wednesday. The charges of simple assault, public drunkenness and harassment were filed Tuesday, and Spadafora will be mailed a summons to appear at a preliminary hearing, online court records show.

Spadafora, who’s 40, appeared to be drunk while holding a blueberry muffin in one hand and an opened, folding tactical knife in the other and yelling at a female clerk, police said.

The clerk “was unable to make out what he was saying, but was extremely scared for her well-being,” police wrote in a criminal complaint.

When officers arrived, police said, Spadafora was belligerent and repeatedly yelled that he isn’t gay, which police didn’t further explain in their complaint. Spadafora was released to his mother’s custody.

The convenience store encounter occurred several hours after an incident at a bar in Crafton, a Pittsburgh suburb, about 40 miles northwest.

Police there charged Spadafora with simple assault and harassment. Spadafora put a 63-year-old woman in a headlock at the bar and drank her beer and then threw her to the pavement when she went outside to call police, according to charges filed last week.

Spadafora’s attorney, Phil DiLucente, said they’re contesting the charges in both incidents.

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