Published: November 14, 2008 11:57 pm      

Charges pulled in chaining arrest

CRESSON — Criminal charges were withdrawn Friday against an Altoona defense lawyer who had been accused of chaining a woman to a couch in their Cambria County apartment.

Angelique Lynch, who is six-months pregnant, testified that she had consented to be chained for hours to the couch by her boyfriend, Mark Zearfaus, because she didn’t want to go back out on the streets looking for illegal drugs.

Zearfaus, who practices law in several area counties, left the courtroom with Lynch without speaking to news reporters.

Heather Long, first assistant district attorney, said the prosecution could not go forward after the woman testified that the incident had been consensual.

By withdrawing the charges – rather than having District Judge Charity Nileski dismiss them – prosecutors could re-file them if Lynch changes her story again, Long said.

Lynch, 28, now will be charged with making a false report to the police, Trooper John Haydu said after Friday’s hearing.

Zearfaus, 40, of the 100 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, Sankertown, was charged by the state police with simple assault, false imprisonment and harassment in the Nov. 7 incident.

Long said that the woman now is seeking placement in a drug treatment center, although her being pregnant makes it difficult for her to get into a treatment program.

Long and Nileski said they advised Lynch of her rights to remain silent and to have an attorney because she could be facing charges based on her testimony. But Lynch said that she wanted to testify.

She said that she and Zearfaus had gotten into an altercation around 10 a.m. on that day when she returned home after staying out all night.

Zearfaus, who is the father of Lynch’s unborn twins, “was upset, and he had a right to be upset. He had picked me up in Altoona (after she called him). I had written some of his checks. I was on drugs and taking money out of the bank,” Lynch said.

The two of them came up with the idea of chaining her inside the apartment because “I didn’t want to be running around and going out and doing the same thing,” she testified.

The two of them went to a hardware store, where Zearfaus bought a 30-foot-long chain, that allowed her to move about the apartment, she testified.

He then left around 10:30, and it wasn’t until seven hours later, around 5:30 p.m., she called out of a window to a neighbor to go for cigarettes because she had “run out of them,” she said.

The neighbor called police later that day, Lynch said.

When Long asked her, “Were you lying then (to the police), or are you lying now,” she insisted that she was testifying truthfully before the magistrate.

With the charges withdrawn, the path apparently is cleared for Zearfaus to be reinstated to his appointed position as one of four conflicts lawyers in Blair County Court.

They represent clients when public defenders have a conflict.