Published: October 31, 2008 11:50 pm      

Guilty plea entered in endangerment case

EBENSBURG — A Johnstown man has pleaded guilty in county court to child endangerment in a case in which a 15-month-old baby girl was critically injured when she fell down the steps while the man allegedly was high on drugs.

Alexander Robert Zack, 20, of the 600 block of Cypress Avenue, will be sentenced Dec. 30 by Judge Gerard Long.

The baby’s mother, Heather Lynn Kohler, 21, of Johnstown, was put on probation for two years on her earlier guilty plea to a lesser charge of reckless endangerment.

West Hills police charged that Kohler had left the child in Zack’s care while she went out to buy crack cocaine.

She was fined $500, plus $1,000 in court fees, by Long. She also was given an additional six months of probation on a guilty plea to drunken driving Aug. 22, 2006, in Johnstown.

The baby was treated initially at Memorial Medical Center and then transferred to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh. Police said the child had suffered bleeding in the brain after the fall.

Deborah Sisk, the child’s guardian, told The Tribune-Democrat that the girl, now 2 years old, has high blood pressure and “night terrors” as the result of what she experienced. The child also is terrorized about having to go to doctors, Sisk said.

Sisk complained to The Tribune-Democrat that she had not been notified in advance of the plea so that she could be present.

District Attorney Patrick Kiniry said that although victims or their families normally are notified in advance of a plea, Zack had decided to enter the plea during a pretrial conference and a judge accepted it immediately.

The prosecutor noted that Zack had entered a plea to the most serious charge he was facing.

“She (Sisk) still can express her opinion about what the sentence should be and about any lasting effects at the time of sentencing,” Kiniry said. “That’s when it’s normally done.”