Plea bargain means Leisenring school intruder will avoid jail time
CONNELLSVILLE – A tentative agreement reached between prosecutors and defense counsel will keep a Leisenring man, charged with unauthorized entry into Connellsville Area High School, from spending any time in jail. Eric P. Jensen, 19, of 1048B Highland Ave., agreed Wednesday to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct and summary charge of defiant trespass, with police withdrawing the more serious felony charges of criminal trespass and burglary.
According to Connellsville investigating officer Cpl. John Gallagher, the agreement is subject to approval by Fayette County District Attorney Nancy Vernon and the Fayette County Court. If approved, Jensen would be placed in the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) program, added Gallagher.
Jensen was slated to appear before District Justice Ronald Haggerty on Wednesday for a scheduled preliminary hearing in connection with the March 3 incident, when he allegedly entered the Connellsville Area High School without authorization and hid from custodians in a ceiling area crawlspace overlooking the girls’ locker room.
Gallagher said that he was prompted to withdraw the felony charges after a complete search of the school and further investigation provided sufficient information that Jensen did not remove anything from the school and that he had he entered the school through an unlocked door.
“There was a great inconvenience caused by his actions and I believe these (disorderly conduct and defiant trespass) are the most appropriate charges,” said Gallagher.
According to school district security director Charles Matthews, Jensen entered the building shortly after 9 p.m. through a rear door that was being kept open for the practicing senior high baseball team.
Matthews said Wednesday that, after reviewing surveillance camera tapes, he is certain Jensen went directly to the locker room and stayed in the vicinity for nearly two hours until custodian Ronald Pritts found him in a maintenance crawlspace that spans between the girls’ and boys’ locker rooms.
Pritts said that, as he was preparing for his shift, he heard someone in the girls’ locker room and sought the assistance of two other custodians who approached the area with him.
“We told him to come down and he did,” said Pritts on Wednesday. “He was pretty cooperative.”
Matthews theorized that Jensen removed screws from the grating and the covering itself by lying atop the lockers and then stood on built-in dryers to gain access into the crawl space.
He declined to speculate Jensen’s motive for being in the school.
Pritts and the other custodians escorted Jensen from the building shortly before midnight.
School administrators and police were alerted to the incident by building principal Robert McLuckey the following morning.
Because of his location during the two-hour period, administrators determined to send the high school students home shortly after their arrival in order to search the building.
Westmoreland County special services personnel and bomb-sniffing dogs, along with the police, found nothing within the facility during the nearly hour-and-one-half search.
Jensen remains free on a $10,000 percentage bond.