CLEARFIELD – A Clearfield man whose child was found locked in an empty room with piles of feces pleaded guilty Monday during sentencing court.
Mark Edward Trojanovich Jr., 43, had been charged with nine felony counts of endangering the welfare of children and 11 misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare in connection with the conditions of his home where six children lived.
During court Monday, he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of children.
His attorney, Joe Ryan, noted that Trojanovich did not have much of a prior record other than some juvenile offenses, he asked for a county sentence.
A representative of the Clearfield County Children, Youth and Family Services told Judge Paul E. Cherry that Trojanovich has been “fully compliant” with their recommendations, completing anger management, drug and parenting counseling.
But a recent drug test had been positive for methamphetamine, she added.
First Assistant District Attorney Leanne Nedza said she didn’t know about the positive drug test and suggested Cherry could continue the case to allow her to investigate it further.
Cherry decided to sentence him and gave him a six-month to two years less one day term in the county jail for each count with the terms of incarceration running concurrent with each other.
According to the affidavit of probable cause, on June 7, 2022, police were called to a disturbance at an apartment where a man was prohibiting a woman from getting into the residence.
The woman, Nicole Renee Krause, who was with five of her six children, was questioned separately from the man.
She said she and the kids had stayed at a hotel the previous night and when she returned, he would not let her into their home. She claimed he pushed her.
Police talked with the man, Trojanovich, inside the home where they noted deplorable living conditions, “not suitable for human occupancy,” according to the report.
There was a foul odor and garbage/spoiled food throughout the apartment. Stairs appeared to be held together with electrical tape.
It would have been difficult for anyone to escape the home quickly in case of an emergency, police wrote in the affidavit.
There were no smoke detectors and there was “crinkled up paper and garbage stuffed into a heating unit on the wall. There were also stray wires/cords from an unknown appliance strung down the hallway.”
When asked about a loaf of bread in the kitchen, he said it was dropped off by a friend because they did not have enough food.
As they spoke with him they could hear a loud banging coming from another room. Trojanovich said the noise was his seven-year-old autistic boy in his bedroom where he often strikes himself against a wall.
When police investigated, they found the boy locked in the room. He was “completely naked and covered in dirt/feces.” The bedroom was worse than the rest of the home with no bed for the child who appeared to had been sleeping on a wrestling mat.
Trojanovich failed to even monitor the child once he was let out, the officers note, as the boy “came running down the stairs with a large kitchen knife in his hand” while he spoke with police, and they watched as Trojanovich wrestled the knife from him.
At the time, both Krause and Trojanovich were subjected to urine tests with Krause being negative but Trojanovich testing positive for methamphetamine.
In May Krause, 33, pleaded guilty in a total of four cases and was sentenced to serve five months to one year in the county jail with three years concurrent probation for the felony charge in one case, six counts of misdemeanor endangering the welfare in a second case, misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia in the third and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia in the last one.