Thomas' Cambria County case could go to trial in spring

Mar. 18—EBENSBURG, Pa. — Suspended Somerset County District Attorney Jeffrey Thomas could face a second criminal trial this spring.

Thomas, 37, faces charges of simple assault and reckless endangerment in a Cambria County case that has been continued until the May 3 term of court.

In an unrelated case, Thomas was convicted on Thursday in Somerset County court of assaulting and strangling a Windber woman in September 2021.

Thomas' case in Cambria County is related to an alleged domestic assault against his wife. According to state police in Ebensburg, Thomas was viewed on video hitting his wife on the way home from a Johnstown bar in May 2021.

A Westmoreland County woman has testified that she witnessed the act during a FaceTime video call with Amy Thomas.

Amy Thomas and her husband have both maintained the story is not true. In court last year, she said she was injured in a car accident after leaving the bar alone because of a dispute with her husband.

"They've weaponized the laws meant to protect victims of domestic violence and manufactured a false claim (against me)," Jeffrey Thomas said in a statement to The Tribune-Democrat in September.

Blair County attorney Thomas Dickey was court-appointed to represent Thomas, whose $186,000 annual salary was suspended last year. Thomas was working part-time at his father's auto garage last fall when the application was granted.

Thomas currently awaits that trial — and his sentencing on his Somerset County conviction — in Somerset County Jail.

Dickey's petition to continue the case to the May court term was approved late last month by Cambria County Judge Linda Rovder Fleming, online records show.