A Dauphin County jury acquitted a Lower Paxton Twp. man of kidnapping an Allentown-area woman, but convicted him of assaulting and robbing her from the Harrisburg East Mall last March.
Brian A. Prendergast, 43, of the first block of Carolyn Street, will be sentenced by Judge Bruce F. Bratton on Nov. 11 after the completion of a county pre-sentence report. He is being held in Dauphin County Prison.
The jury convicted Prendergast after more than four hours of deliberations. However, he was acquitted of kidnapping school psychologist Dawn Wadsworth, who was visiting the Harrisburg area for a conference last March and had decided to visit malls. The kidnapping was the most serious charge.
Prendergast said then, in testimony repeated when he took the witness stand Tuesday, that he was despondent over the break-up of his marriage and resulting reliance on his family after his wife left and took everything except his van.
Prendergast said he had been driving around for two weeks drinking heavily, taking Prozac and contemplating suicide.
“He’s blaming his ex-wife for this snapping,” Deputy District Attorney Jennifer E. Bevan said in her closing argument to jurors.
Prendergast’s court-appointed public defender, Justin McShane, conceded his client was guilty of robbing Wadsworth, but told jurors that his client “thought his last day on earth was that day.”
McShane said Prendergast was not guilty of kidnapping because he had not detained Wadsworth for a long-enough period of time.
“That is clearly not the case. This is a brave woman who resisted,” McShane said.
According to court documents, on March 22, Wadsworth had just left the Lord and Taylor store when she walked near a white van parked in the lot.
As she passed the van, a man stepped out, put a knife to her throat and dragged her inside, where for 30 minutes she was trapped as she tried in vain to summon help with her remote car alarm, while he attempted to put duct tape on her mouth and roll her over.
Wadsworth was slashed through her coat on her shoulder, causing a wound that required six stitches. Bevan introduced the coat, with its visible slash, into evidence.
After offering him money, she pleaded with him not to hurt her, using her skills as a psychologist to reason with Prendergast.
Apologizing, Prendergast let Wadsworth go after 30 minutes. He was stopped several hours later in Susquehanna Twp. by Det. Sgt. Robert Sirrimonds.
Prendergast gave incriminating statements to police, in which he admitted robbing Wadsworth.
Duct tape and a knife were found in a search of his van.
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