NORTHAMPTON — Keith A. Truehart, the Belchertown man accused of seriously injuring his girlfriend’s infant almost two years ago, was sentenced to prison Tuesday after pleading guilty in Hampshire Superior Court to three accounts of assault and battery causing serious bodily injury on a child younger than 14 and one count of misleading police.
Police said Truehart was responsible for seriously injuring the infant, less than 1 year old, 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.
In November 2014, the child’s mother, Melonie K. Cummings, 29, originally told first-responders that the baby had fallen on a toy. But medical staff and investigators determined that the injuries were not consistent with that explanation, according to the Northwestern district attorney’s office.
Truehart was placed on the state’s most wanted list. In June 2015, authorities searched Cummings’ home and found Truehart under the kitchen sink in a makeshift hideout made of wood and plasterboard.
Cummings pleaded guilty last month to being an accessory to a crime after the fact as well as misleading the police.
Cummings was sentenced to 18 months in the Western Massachusetts Regional Correctional Center in Chicopee followed by four years of probation.
On Tuesday, Truehart’s attorney Korrina Burnham, of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, and the prosecutor, Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Caleb Weiner presented an agreed-upon plea deal to Judge Ferrara.
The deal, which Ferrara accepted, translates to three years in state prison followed by five years probation. The attorneys agreed to three years’ prison time for each of the assault and battery charges, although they are to be served concurrently.
This story will be updated.