Man Receives Prison Sentence for Hellertown Attack

After pleading guilty to the crime in December, a 37-year-old former Hellertown man who attacked and stabbed his wife at a Magnolia Road home was sentenced to 8 to 16 years in state prison last week, according to published reports.

Channel 69 News reported Tuesday that Joshua Lee Hoch of Emmaus told police he attacked his wife out of “desperation” after she asked him to stop banging a metal object against another object, grabbing her and pinning her to the ground as he held a serrated kitchen knife and told her, “it’s your time to die and it’s my time, too.”

The news story indicated that the woman was stabbed by Hoch but managed to break free, running to a nearby bathroom where she was again stabbed before pushing Hoch into a tub and running out of the home.

Lehigh Valley Live reported that Hoch chased her outside and pinned her down before a bystander intervened by pulling him away.

According to the Lehigh Valley Live story, in addition to the state prison sentence for attempted homicide, Hoch was also ordered to have no contact with the victim and her family, to pay a $1,000 Domestic Violence Unit fine, to undergo both domestic violence and psychiatric evaluations and to comply with any treatment that is recommended to the court.

For the Dec. 6, 2021 attack Hoch was also sentenced by Northampton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Craig Dally to three years of post-confinement probation, according to the docket filed in the case.

He was to receive credit for any time already served under the sentence handed down by Dally.

Charges of aggravated assault (two felony counts), terroristic threats, possessing an instrument of crime, recklessly endangering another person and simple assault were withdrawn as part of Hoch’s plea agreement, the docket showed.

Hoch was represented in court by attorney Steven Richard Mills of Asteak Law Offices of Easton, according to the docket.