SCRANTON, Pa. — A man is dead, and a Scranton woman is locked up after allegedly stabbing him three times with a butcher knife.
The Lackawanna County coroner confirms George Shencavitz, 31, died at the hospital just before midnight on Wednesday.
Police found him in the 1600 block of Penn Avenue around 9 p.m. Wednesday.
Investigators have charged Eileen Dougherty, 40, of Scranton in the attack.
Dougherty was serving her 6-month house arrest in a home on Delaware Street after she was charged last year with abuse of a care-dependent person. She was living here with her fiancé.
According to court paperwork, when the couple got into an argument Wednesday night, he threatened to try and send her back to prison. Then, Dougherty stabbed him.
Neighbors say Dougherty and Shencavitz had just recently moved in.
Dougherty was under house arrest. She was arrested last year for abusing a mentally challenged woman in her care while she worked at a group home for adults with disabilities.
Robert Shaffern lives two doors down from the couple.
"We heard a man screaming. I couldn't make out what he was saying, but my daughter downstairs said that he was talking about being stabbed."
Shaffern's wife is a nurse; she ran over to the neighbors to see if someone needed help.
"By the time she was out of the house, the screaming had stopped, the guy had disappeared, but the door was open, so she went in and heard a woman speaking kind of in a hysterical fashion."
Shaffern says Dougherty had a small wound on her chest. His wife, believing Dougherty was the victim, stayed with her until emergency crews arrived.
"She did mention about maybe going back to prison. 'He was going to send me back to prison.' She talked about how he had been drinking, but she was hysterical."
According to court papers, Dougherty told police she and her fiancé had been fighting all day. She says she grabbed a butcher knife, Shencavitz punched her in the face, and then she stabbed him twice. When Shencavitz ran to the bathroom and called 911, Dougherty followed him and stabbed him a third time before he escaped from the house.
Police found Shencavitz about a block and a half away from his home. He died a few hours later at Geisinger Community Medical Center.
Dougherty is locked up in the Lackawanna County Prison on two counts of aggravated assault. She was denied bail. The district attorney tells Newswatch 16 he anticipates homicide charges will be filed.
Dougherty and a codefendant were sentenced in November 2020 and were supposed to be in jail for at least 8 months. However, Dougherty filed a motion asking for the sentence to be reconsidered. In December, the judge ordered Dougherty to be on home confinement until she was eligible for parole.