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Former police employee acquitted of making threats

A longtime civilian worker in the Philadelphia Police Department was acquitted by a judge Thursday of charges that she brandished a gun and threatened to kill a South Philadelphia woman last summer during a dispute between families.

Kathy Pugh, 53, was found not guilty of terroristic threats, simple assault, reckless endangerment and conspiracy following a nonjury trial.
Kathy Pugh, 53, was found not guilty of terroristic threats, simple assault, reckless endangerment and conspiracy following a nonjury trial.Read more

A longtime civilian worker in the Philadelphia Police Department was acquitted by a judge Thursday of charges that she brandished a gun and threatened to kill a South Philadelphia woman last summer during a dispute between families.

Kathy Pugh, 53, was found not guilty of terroristic threats, simple assault, reckless endangerment, and conspiracy after a nonjury trial before Common Pleas Court Judge Joan A. Brown.

Brown warned Pugh to stay away from the other family in the dispute.

"All the credit I give to God in all his glory," Pugh, a former minister, said after the verdict.

Pugh said she would seek reinstatement as a police clerk typist, a job she held for 27 years until her arrest in the June 22 altercation in the 2500 block of South American Street.

According to trial testimony, there was bad blood between Robert Reid Jr., son of Pugh's boyfriend, and Angelina Matos, mother of Reid's young son.

The dispute, centered on alleged harassing and salacious Internet posts by Reid, boiled over June 22, and ensnared the couple's parents. Shortly after noon, Pugh, Reid, and Robert Reid Sr. went to Matos' house on American to settle a sidewalk argument started that day between Matos and Reid Jr.

Matos and her parents, Edwin Matos and Barbara Wiatrak, testified that the argument escalated to the threat of fisticuffs until Pugh said, "There are too many of you. . . . I'm going to go to my car and get my burner."

Wiatrak testified that Pugh threatened her with a gun, and Edwin Matos told the court that Reid Sr. then got the gun and threatened him.

Assistant District Attorney Andrew Wellbrock played an audiotape of Wiatrak's frenzied 911 call to police, in which she said over a background chorus of shrieking people that she was being threatened with a gun.

Police arrested Pugh and Reid Sr., 44, at the scene and found an unloaded .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol registered to Pugh in Reid's pants.

Wellbrock argued that Wiatrak's 911 call corroborated the Matos family's testimony of being threatened at gunpoint.

Defense attorney Fortunato N. Perri Jr. argued that there were too many discrepancies in the Matoses' testimony to prove that Pugh ever possessed or brandished the pistol.

Pugh did not testify, but Perri called two women - a member of Pugh's former congregation and a police civilian employee who worked with Pugh - who vouched for her character.

After the verdict, Pugh rushed into the gallery in tears and embraced the two women.

Later Thursday, Reid Sr. pleaded no contest before Common Pleas Court Judge Charles Ehrlich to carrying a concealed gun without a license, and was sentenced to three to 12 months in jail but was immediately released on two years' probation.

Ehrlich let Reid Sr. travel so he could marry Pugh and go on a honeymoon.

Reid Sr., a cook with no prior arrests, admitted threatening the Matos family with the gun, though he knew it was not loaded.

"I never meant nobody no malice," Reid Sr. told the judge. "I just wanted my family to safely leave that neighborhood."