70-Year-Old Pennsylvania Woman to Stand Trail for Stabbing a Man with Knife Hidden in Her Cane!
Imagine our surprise when this story came across our desks! A 70-year-old Philadelphia woman has been charged with stabbing a man.
Reports from Philly say that on June 10th Renee DiPietro, 70, stabbed 31-year-old Michael Thomas Sides to death after he got into a physical altercation with her son.
Prosecutors said Lower Marion Township officers responded around 1:30 a.m. on June 10 to a reported stabbing at the intersection of Cricket Avenue and Cricket Terrace in Philadelphia. They discovered Sides bleeding profusely from stab wounds.
A friend of Sides, Dan Rogers, said that Sides had been "sucker punched" by DiPietro's son, Jason DiPietro, and that Sides wanted his revenge. Sides sought our Jason and saw him getting into a vehicle with his parents. Sides went up to the vehicle and the two men got into a scuffle. Law & Crime reports that during the altercation, the victim was preventing Jason DiPietro from getting into a white car when his parents Renee and Michael DiPietro, got out out of the car, according to the affidavit.
Rogers saw Renee DiPietro “lunge” toward the victim, causing him to fall to the ground bleeding with what appeared to be a black cane that fell apart, the affidavit said. She then struck the victim while he was on the ground, detectives wrote.
“Rogers stated it was then apparent to him that the female stabbed the victim,” the affidavit said. “Following the stabbing, Rogers stated the female was attempted to remove the license plate from the vehicle and the older white male, the female and Jason DiPietro departed from the scene in the white sedan, believed to be a Nissan.”
Renee DiPietro can be seen on area surveillance video bending the license plate of the vehicle upward, in an attempt to conceal the plate numbers. That attempt failed and the local police showed up at the family's home shortly thereafter.
Renee DiPietro told police that her son had called her earlier in the evening "crying" and upset over an altercation that he'd had with the victim. She din't want to see her son get hurt so she went to the scene. Taking her baseball bat, walking cane and her husband to the location, DiPietro said she only wanted to get her son. However, when her son tried to get into the car, a “big” man prevented him from doing so and was assaulting him, the affidavit said. She got out of her car to “defend her son” and said when the man came at her she “poked him” and he fell to the ground before driving away with her husband and son, detectives wrote.
“It was self-defense, he came looking for trouble and he got it,” Michael DiPietro said, according to the affidavit.
First responders rushed Sides to the Lankenau Medical Center but he was pronounced dead by 2:38 a.m.
DiPietro is charged with third-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and possession of an instrument of crime with intent, according to court records. She is due back in court November 8, 2023.
