WEST CHESTER — The Chester County man who stabbed a neighbor he had been squabbling with for years over issues involving a fence and some trees along the pair’s property line has been found guilty in the case in which he claimed he acted in self-defense.
Glen Phillips of Uwchlan was found guilty of aggravated assault, assault with a deadly weapon, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, and possession of an instrument of crime.
The Common Pleas Court jury, however, acquitted Phillips — a security consultant who had no prior criminal history before the attack on his neighbor outside Phillips’ home — of the most serious crime he was charged with, attempted murder.
The panel of six men and six women deliberated for more than six hours on Friday before returning with their verdict to Judge Sarah Black’s courtroom around 9 p.m. Friday. The trial lasted five days and featured testimony from Phillips and his neighbor, Charles Oswald, as well as surveillance footage of the attack and a cell phone video that Oswald’s wife had taken of the encounter.
Following the verdict, Black revoked Phillips’ bail and he was taken from the courtroom in handcuffs. He is now incarcerated at Chester County Prison, where he will await sentencing later this year. He faces the possibility of years behind bars in a state prison.
The incident, saw Phillips, 55, stab Oswald multiple times with a folding knife in the summer of 2023. Phillips has contended that he was acting in self-defense after Oswald drove to his home and confronted him in the street, punching him in the face.
The verdict indicates that the jury rejected his claim of self-defense, which the prosecution said was belied by the brutality and force of the wounds he inflicted on Oswald. However, the finding of not guilty on the attempted murder charge suggests that the panel could not find that he acted with specific intent to kill him.
Oswald, who lives in West Whiteland, suffered a collapsed lung, a tube in his chest, and internal bleeding, his wife, Marnie Oswald, said after the incident. A doctor who testified at the trial said that if the cuts had been just slightly different, he could have died.
The dispute between the two men concerned competing claims about a fence that Phillips and his wife contend is on their property, which abuts Oswald’s yard but which Oswald allegedly had refused to move, and over trees that the Oswalds say overhang their driveway from the Phillips’ yard and put them at risk. The families had been arguing over the matters for years.
In closing arguments on Friday after the week-long trial, the two sides presented the six men and six women jurors with differing perspectives on how they should view the stabbing.
Assistant District Attorney Kimberly Kaelin, who led the prosecution with colleague Kaitlyn Michalek, told the panel that “you don’t get to stab your neighbor just because you don’t like him. And we are here because of that. (Phillips) escalated a neighborhood dispute into an almost murder.”
“The defendant was on an active crusade to get rid of Mr. Oswald,” she said, at the same time conceding that Oswald himself had acted inappropriately during the long-running dispute. “This was not justified in any way, shape, or form.”
Meanwhile, in his closing, defense attorney Ryan Hyde of Exton that it was Oswald’s near relentless badgering of Phillis, his wife, and their two children, that created the climate that resulted in his client being forced to take action.
“Over two years, Charles Oswald began a torture campaign against the Phillips family,” he said. “Children were involved.” Even if during their encounter Oswald had not actually threatened Phillips, his intent to do so was clear.
His client was forced to use deadly force against Oswald when the other man punched him in the face. “The question for you is what was my client’s intent when he did it. He didn’t want to kill him. He just wanted to be left alone.”
Uwchlan Sgt. Stephen Saraceni wrote in an arrest affidavit that he responded to a call for a stabbing at about 5:45 p.m. on June 15, 2023, at the intersection of Rennard Drive and Biddle Drive. There, he saw Oswald standing next to his white Transit work van with no shirt on. He had a large amount of blood on his neck and chest area, and the officer saw a large cut on the right side of his neck.
Saraceni also saw Phillips sitting on a curb across the street from his home in the 400 block of Rennard Drive. Close to him was a large pool of blood in the roadway, the officer wrote. He was able to determine that there had been an altercation between the men and noted in the report that “Phillips stabbed and slashed Oswald with a folding knife, causing significant injury, namely two stab wounds to his torso and back and a slash to the right side of his neck.”
Indeed, Phillips did not deny the accusation when Saraceni approached him outside his home on an otherwise quiet cul-de-sac in the North Valley Hills neighborhood of Uwchlan, the officer added.
He and Oswald “got into it,” after Oswald appeared in his van, looped around the cul-de-sac, and began honking his horn outside Phillips’ home. “They exchanged words, and Glenn said Oswald punched him in the face,” Saraceni said in prior testimony.
The violence of the attack is out of the ordinary for Uwchlan, where serious crime is low, even though it is among the county’s most populated municipalities. In the five years leading up to the stabbing, there had been fewer than 20 aggravated assaults in the township, and no homicides in the same period, according to state police records. Neither Phillips nor Oswald has any criminal history in the county, according to court records.
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.
