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By JOHN DECKER; Times Leader Staff Writer
Friday, August 20, 1999 Page: 1A
HANOVER TWP.- A murderer and an arsonist who escaped from the State
Correctional Institution at Dallas and eluded their hunters for four days met
their match Thursday afternoon- feisty, 77-year-old Irene Rinehamer of
Nanticoke.
She had just finished shopping at Gerrity’s Supermarket in the Dundee
Shopping Center at about 12:45 p.m. and was loading her groceries into her
1990 Ford F-150 truck. She returned her shopping cart to a stall in the
parking lot and went around to the driver-side door.
Police say that’s when Anthony Yang, a convicted serial arsonist, attacked.
“He put his hands over my mouth, and I couldn’t breathe,” a still shaken
Irene said in the same parking lot, more than six hours after the attack and
just moments after the two escapees were captured in the Susquehanna River.
“He had a rod in his hand, and he was going to strike me with that rod.”
Irene said her attacker said, “I was waiting for you.”
At the time, Irene had no idea she was dealing with an escaped convict.
She just thought it was “some bully” who was trying to grab her keys.
But Irene was not the innocent prey the escapees expected. Irene, whose
wrist hours later still hurt from holding tightly onto her keys, said she
kicked Yang with her right foot and knocked him off balance. “What he wanted
was my truck,” she said.
“I thought (the escapees) were miles away. Who would know they were right
here?
“I’m a toughy,” said Irene, who is about 5 feet, 3 inches. “They don’t make
them that way anymore. I believe it was the good Lord that gave me the
stamina.”
She said she was able to keep Yang from getting her keys and started to
scream. A man with a cell phone called 911 as he ran to help.
At that point, Yang fled behind the store and into the woods. Police do not
know where Michael McCloskey, a twice-convicted murder who escaped with Yang,
was at that time, but he later met up with Yang. The men, who are from
Philadelphia, were arrested together.
In addition to escape charges, Yang was hit with aggravated and simple
assault charges for the alleged attack on Rinehamer.
A couple of hours after the attack, the area around the Sans Souci Parkway
was swarming with police and shotgun-toting corrections officers from state
prisons in Dallas and Retreat. Irene gave her eyeglasses to police, who were
able to get a fingerprint off one of the lenses and match it to Yang’s.
More than 100 corrections officers searched the woods while others waited
along the roadway, about 20 feet apart, in case the men were flushed out. A
helicopter equipped with an infrared device swarmed just over the treeline as
bloodhounds tracked the convicts, who were cellmates. They were caught in the
river.
Afterward, Irene talked with and thanked several corrections officers who
were returning to their base camp behind Gerrity’s.
One unidentified corrections officer told her, “You can sleep good
tonight.”
“Well, God love you, you stopped them,” another officer said.
Irene’s son, David, said he couldn’t be more proud of his mom.
“I think she’s very brave. She comes from the old school,” he said. “She
was always feisty, and she gave him a good kick.”
Irene jokingly said that she plans to keep “a nice 2×4” with her from now
on. “And I know how to use it.”