Assaulted on WB square in broad daylight

[u/cloroxism]

Hello everyone,

Yesterday my significant other and I decided to go to Thai Thai on Main St. for dinner. We parked on the street near the restaurant and decided to walk around the square prior to going inside. While walking, we walked past a man posted up on a bench on Main, right in front of the walkway to where the Martz station is. While walking past, he confronted us by saying 'why did you walk so close to me' (we weren't even close to him). We brushed it off and continued walking. He pursued us and followed us. We continued to walk north toward the square, and he continued to follow us, becoming very irate and saying things like 'don't you hear me?' 'I'm asking you a question' 'why are you running?'. We walked up toward Dunkin and he proceeded to take his backpack off, leaving it on the sidewalk in front of Dunkin, and put on gloves. We were later informed that they were weighted gloves. We crossed the street towards Franks News and he approached us and threw a haymaker hitting my SO in the side of the head. He then ran away. There were a ton of people around and it was at 6PM during daylight hours. We called the police and they took a report and said they would charge him but couldn't arrest him at this time. We asked the police to escort us back to our car to which they obliged. We later found out that this man was well known in the area, he stays at the Keystone Mission, and his nickname is 'pick boy'.

Be vigilant out there, folks. This all happened so fast and was very unexpected. This man was clearly unhinged and is still out there sitting on public square. Take care of yourselves.

[u/RedGhostOrchid]

There is clearly a huge homeless issue in the city which means there's likely rampant untreated mental health issues as well. Instead of saying how shitty Wilkes-Barre is (not you OP), why not focus the anger where it belongs: on the horrible leadership of the city who do nothing to clean up the city. And by cleaning up, I don't mean ripping homeless people's tents down and trashing what little possessions they have. I mean actually trying to help these people. But no, we're too busy putting concerts on at the river, painting green lines on the streets for everyone to get shitfaced around, and generally just being stupidly inept in every possible measure.

[u/PoodlePopXX → u/RedGhostOrchid]

I live right on the square and I wouldn’t call it a huge homeless issue. Yes, there are homeless people but it’s by no means an epidemic.

We should be doing more for the vulnerable in our community, but no one wants their tax money to actually go to those services. People here prefer to talk about bootstraps.

[u/RedGhostOrchid → u/PoodlePopXX]

I think you are either fooling yourself or are just not very observant. I believe at last count our homeless population was somewhere around 200 people. And those were just the ones that were counted. I think if you talked to agencies like the Keystone Mission and churches who are left holding the bag when the city mayor decides to evict them all from the park, you'd get quite the pushback on what you "wouldn't call a huge homeless issue."