Couple Charged With Endangering A Child

Harrisburg PA

28 April, 2022

6:14 PM

Description

By Julye Wemple, NorthCentralPA.com April 28, 2022 A couple has been charged with endangerment after police say they found a dirty two-year-old child wandering in a neighbor's yard earlier this month. The child appeared to have infected cuts on her legs and they were covered with what looked to be animal feces when a neighbor found the little girl in the backyard of a home on East Fifth Street on April 14 around 7 a.m., Berwick Officer Brandon Shultz said. Officers checked the neighborhood and found an open back door a few houses down. Inside, the girl's mother, 28-year-old Janel Merritt, was asleep on the couch, charges say. They woke Merritt, who told them her daughter, Sophia, had never left the house alone before. When they asked if anyone else was in the house, Merritt confirmed her husband, Kevin Leslie, was in the residence, according to the police affidavit. Kevin Merritt, 29, was not allowed to be in the home as a condition of his state parole, Shultz noted. He had been convicted of dropping Sophia on her head when she was just two months old, which caused a skull fracture. EMTs were brought in to evaluate the little girl and cleared her on the condition Janel Merritt take her to an urgent care clinic to have her wounds treated, arrest papers say. Both were charged with felony endangerment of a child. The couple is set to appear for a preliminary hearing May 2 at 11 a.m. in front of District Judge Richard Knecht. NorthcentralPa.com provides the region with reliable, relevant, and real-time news, covering weather, community news and events, crime, police activity, local, regional, and national alerts, and PennDOT-reported road construction and conditions. We report on local and regional politics, offer a platform for nonprofits to report their news and events, and share obituaries. Scanner reports let readers know what's happening outside their homes the minute it happens.