Parnell, a decorated Army veteran who received a Purple Heart after serving in Afghanistan, won an August endorsement from former President Donald Trump, but his campaign quickly unraveled after a rival questioned his personal conduct and his wife, Laurie Snell, testified under oath that Parnell choked her, pinned her down and called her “a whore.”.
Senate candidate Sean Parnell’s wife testified that he choked her and hit their children.
Arner did not offer conclusions about which specific acts of abuse against Snell happened, but wrote that he believed her accounts of two incidents involving Parnell and their children.“I find that the incidents involving the two boys did happen as described by Laurie Snell, but I am not placing weight on that evidence because a period of three and one half years has gone by without further incident,” wrote Arner, a Clarion County judge brought in to oversee the case in Butler County.Parnell, in his statement, said that weighed on his decision to end his Senate campaign.
Sam DeMarco, the Republican chairman in Allegheny County said Parnell “was the clear leader” previouslyThe details of Snell’s accusations became public in a cramped courtroom in Butler County, with Parnell sitting just feet from his estranged wife