A Bethlehem woman who was on federal probation faces multiple charges in Carbon County after she solicited others to help her stab herself, according to a criminal complaint filed last week at Magisterial District Judge Eric Schrantz’s office.

According to Jim Thorpe Det. Lee Marzen, witnesses told him Amber Paige Moeck, 27, feared failing a drug test and going back to jail, leading to the Jan. 24 stabbing.

Moeck, who also has a Jim Thorpe apartment address listed, is charged with two felonies including criminal solicitation of aggravated assault and criminal use of a communication facility, and five misdemeanors including false reports, obstruction of law, false alarm to an agency of public safety, unsworn falsification to authorities and criminal solicitation of simple assault.

Before the incident

A Lehighton woman told Jim Thorpe Police that Moeck was at her home on Jan. 23 and had been using illegal narcotics, particularly methamphetamine.

“(The witness) said Moeck had been soliciting people in the home to stab her,” Jim Thorpe Det. Lee Marzen wrote in an affidavit of probable cause. “She stated Moeck was upset because she had illegal drugs in her system and didn’t want to go to jail. Moeck stated the only way she could think to avoid jail was to stab herself or be stabbed by someone.”

The next morning, the witness told police, she went to William Shook’s house in Jim Thorpe, where Moeck was sitting at the end of a kitchen countertop with a knife in her hand and said she was “going to have to do it.”

The witness said she quickly left the residence.

Shook told police he was with Moeck and several others at a lake in the Stroudsburg area several days before the stabbing, when Moeck told them she was due to meet with her federal probation officer on Jan. 24.

“She told everyone she was subject to a urine test,” Marzen wrote. “Moeck told me during the course of interviews that she had been clean for seven months and had been released from a rehabilitation facility in December 2022.”

According to Shook, Moeck asked everyone at the lake if they would be willing to help her by stabbing her.

The stabbing

Jim Thorpe police responded to the St. Luke’s Carbon Campus on Jan. 24 for the report of a stabbing that happened in the borough.

While Moeck was being treated, police spoke with William Shook, who had come to the hospital with her. Shook said Moeck “came knocking on his door around 8 a.m. and stated she was stabbed,” according to the affidavit filed by Marzen. While Moeck drove to the hospital, Shook added, he put pressure on her wounds.

Moeck initially told 911 dispatchers and Franklin Township police that she was stabbed by a black man who ran off and got away in what looked to her like “a blue freaking sportster Honda.” She also told police the same individual had been following her for two weeks.

After being discharged from the hospital, Moeck told Jim Thorpe police that wasn’t true and that it was Shook who stabbed her a total of four times.

“Moeck stated that prior to being stabbed, Shook was pacing around the apartment saying he couldn’t do it,” Marzen wrote in the affidavit. “She said his right hand came flying at her right thigh and nicked it. She went on to report he did it again and hit her thigh spot on.”

Moeck told police that Shook didn’t stop after hitting the thigh.

“Billy grabbed my shoulder with his left hand as his right arm came down twice quickly stabbing me in the right shoulder,” she told police.

After the stabbing, Moeck told police, she ran to her vehicle and Shook followed, jumping it before she left for the hospital.

Police interviewed Shook, who said that while he didn’t want to help Moeck by stabbing her, he “reluctantly did.”

“Shook said he was in shock and put pressure on the wounds,” Marzen wrote. “He admitted to assisting in stabbing Moeck two times and that he blacked out after the knife went in her leg.”

Moeck is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on Feb. 22 at 3:30 p.m. She is incarcerated in Lackawanna County Prison on federal charges.

Shook faces charges on three counts of simple assault; two counts of aggravated assault; and one count of possessing instrument of crime with intent.

He is incarcerated in the Carbon County Correctional Facility in lieu of $10,000 monetary bail, and scheduled to have a preliminary hearing on Wednesday at 2:15 p.m.