NORTHAMPTON — Keith A. Truehart — once among the state’s most wanted fugitives before he was captured by authorities last summer — has been sentenced to prison after admitting to child abuse charges in court.
The Belchertown man pleaded guilty in Hampshire Superior Court this week to three counts of assault and battery causing serious bodily injury on a child younger than 14 and one count of misleading police.
Truehart’s attorney Korrina Burnham, of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, and the prosecutor, Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Caleb Weiner presented a plea deal to Judge John Ferrara on Tuesday.
The deal, which Ferrara accepted, sentences Truehart to three years in state prison followed by five years of probation. The attorneys agreed to three years’ prison time for each of the assault and battery charges, although they are to be served concurrently.
Truehart’s terms of probation include completing any program recommended by the Department of Probation, not having any unsupervised or indirect contact with children younger than 18, not living with any children, not having any overnight visits with children, not working with children, not having contact with his ex-girlfriend Melonie Cummings or her children, abstaining from drugs and alcohol, and — for the first year — submit to wearing a GPS device and avoid any exclusion zone stipulated by the Department of Probation, according to the district attorney’s office.
Prosecutors said Truehart was responsible for seriously injuring Cummings’ infant daughter when she was admitted to the hospital with fractured ribs as well as bruises to her face and inner ears. Truehart had been babysitting the infant.
When Cummings, 29, returned home from running errands that day in November 2014, she phoned 911 when she discovered her youngest child’s injuries, police said.