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WILKES-BARRE TWP. — The former chief of the township’s volunteer fire department, who is no stranger to legal issues, is once again in hot water after he allegedly threatened the mayor’s daughter last fall.
John Paul Yuknavich, 55, was arrested in November on charges he threatened Kathy Lloyd, the daughter of Wilkes-Barre Township Mayor Carl Kuren.
Yuknavich stopped his truck Oct. 23 when he spotted Lloyd walking with her husband, according to an affidavit. He allegedly began yelling at her, accusing her of running a Facebook page called “Wilkes-Barre Township Scum.”
When Lloyd denied this, Yuknavich allegedly said “they” told him she was running it. When pressed for who “they” are, he said, “people with badges who were coming for her.”
The next day, Yuknavich allegedly posted that he was “Coming for her family and would gut them like fish.” He also allegedly posted, “When I get them they will look like fish on a stringer gutted.”
Yuknavich is scheduled to go to trial on misdemeanor charges of terroristic threats, stalking and harassment before Luzerne County Judge Michael T. Vough on May 13.
The former fire chief previously spent six months in federal prison after he pleaded guilty in 2014 to charges he stole $45,000 from the department between 2008 and 2011.