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Belle Vernon woman gets house arrest in child endangerment case

By Susy Kelly skelly@heraldstandard.Com 2 min read

A Belle Vernon woman who pleaded guilty to child endangerment charges was sentenced to up to 23 months of intermediate punishment in Fayette County Court on Thursday.

Tracy Price, 25, will spend the first 12 months of her 6- to-23-month sentence on house arrest with electronic monitoring, President Judge John F. Wagner Jr. ordered. But if she can make it through the first “several months” of the sentence with no violations, he would consider removing the ankle bracelet.

Price was charged with child endangerment in February, after police alleged she was aware her two small children were being injured by babysitter and family friend Joshua Tannous, 20, of Bentleyville, but she continued to allow him to care for them.

She has since obtained full custody of the two girls, and is living with her grandmother while working at a restaurant, Price said.

Wagner indicated he would be willing to remove the electronic monitoring portion of the sentence and replace it with a strict form of probation, so that Price would not be burdened with the $15 per day monitoring fee.

“We don’t want to divert limited money toward monitoring when it can be better used to care for your children,” the judge said.

Tannous and Price’s husband, Mathew Price, were also both charged in relation to the injuries of the Price’s children. Court documents state Tannous was staying with the Price’s for period of time and agreed to provide childcare when the parents worked.

On the night of Feb. 3, 2014, Tannous woke the Prices to tell them their 6-month-old daughter choked on her milk and wasn’t breathing, according to testimony from Tannous’ trial in August

The baby was taken to the hospital, and, doctors requested to see the 2-year-old as well, according to testimony.

Southwest Regional Police were alerted when doctors at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh discovered the 2-year-old had two fractured collarbones and a broken right scapula, and tests revealed the baby had earlier head trauma consistent with shaken baby syndrome, as well as a leg fracture.

Tannous was convicted of simple assault and endangering the welfare of a child, and sentenced to 6 to 23 months in jail.

Mathew Price pleaded guilty to child endangerment in September, and received a 9 to 23 month jail sentence. He was paroled the following month.

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