A Blair County judge has dismissed felony child endangerment charges against a Freedom Township couple whose baby, only 36 days old, died in 2019 while he was sleeping with his parents.

After an investigation into the child’s death, Pennsylvania State Police filed multiple charges against the parents, Robert Lee Zeth, 37, and Elizabeth Ann McIntyre, 29, including felony counts of conspiracy to endanger the welfare of a child, and endangering the welfare of a child and misdemeanor counts of recklessly endangering another person.

Blair County President Judge Elizabth A. Doyle, in an opinion last week, dismissed the felony charges, pointing out there was no evidence of a conspiracy by the parents to endanger the welfare of the child. She also agreed with defense lawyers that evidence did not show that the parents, by placing the child in their bed, had endangered their newborn, Robert Vincent Zeth.

Zeth and McIntyre will each stand trial for the misdemeanor counts of recklessly endangering another person, conspiracy to tampering with evidence, and tampering with evidence.

McIntyre also faces a charge of criminal use of a communications facility. A similar charge was dismissed against Zeth.

On June 8, 2019, the couple were living in a camper along Tuscarora Road, Freedom Township, with their baby and a 3-year-old.

According to testimony during a hearing on

Dec. 31, the parents and children were all sleeping in a twin-sized bed. The baby was on a pillow between Zeth and McIntyre.

When morning came, Zeth first discovered the infant was unresponsive.

McIntyre, distraught, took the baby to a neighbor’s home, and later, by cellphone, texted the neighbors, Donald Eugene McChessney and Cara Joy McChessney, asking them to tidy up the camper and to take away several boxes of items.

The McChessneys did not know what was contained in the boxes.

Trooper Eric Glunt testified that the camper was “cluttered,” and there were items in the camper that would have been dangerous for an unsupervised toddler, such as oil and antifreeze, but he found no evidence the parents were not supervising the children.

The bed in which the family slept held a blanket, a comforter, and two pillows with pillowcases on the bed.

A key witness during the December hearing was

Dr. Lauren Huddle, a forensic pathologist from Windber, who conducted the autopsy of the child and who ruled the cause of death was “undetermined.”

She ruled out asphyxiation, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, known as SIDS, or disease as causes of the child’s death.

A small amount of methamphetamine was found in the child’s system, but Huddle “could not opine that exposure to methamphetamine could create a risk of serious bodily injury in an infant,” according to Doyle’s opinion.

The amount of methamphetamine was so slight it could have come from a product such as Vicks VapoRub, it was noted.

Huddle also stated she “could not definitely medically state that co-sleeping with two adults and two children in the same bed would create a risk to the safety of serious bodily injury of the infant.”

“I can’t state that another child in the same situation wouldn’t make it through the night and be perfectly fine,” Huddle testified.

She ended her testimony by saying, “There could be something underlying in this child that we don’t know about and that is why (the death) is undetermined for me.”

Defense attorneys — Richard M. Corcoran for McIntyre and Daniel J. Kiss for Zeth — requested a hearing on the charges.

During the hearing, Corcoran contended police, by filing felony charges of child endangerment, had overcharged the couple.

In making her decision to dismiss the felony charges, the judge cited Huddle’s conclusion that she could not conclude co-sleeping in a bed with blankets and pillows contributed to the child’s death.

During the December hearing, Judge Doyle sentenced Donald McChessney and Cara Joy McChessney to two years’ probation for tampering with evidence.