LANCASTER : Man Convicted of Raping, Shaking Infant to Death
A Lancaster man was convicted Wednesday of sexually assaulting and then shaking an infant to death, with the jury returning a first-degree murder verdict with special circumstances that could result in the death penalty.
The six-man, six-woman Van Nuys Superior Court jury returned the verdict against Robert Brian Patalsky in San Fernando Superior Court, meeting in Van Nuys.
Beginning Tuesday, jurors will decide whether Patalsky deserves death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In his closing argument last week in the Van Nuys courtroom, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert B. Foltz described the attack on 13-month-old Brianna Lee Schmidt as “unspeakable.”
On Nov. 30, 1991, Patalsky, a 26-year-old carpet cleaner and reputed methamphetamine user, was left to care for Brianna, his girlfriend’s infant daughter, while the girlfriend and Patalsky’s mother went shopping.
Patalsky later rushed the girl to a neighbor’s house, saying he had found Brianna in a playpen, covered in vomit and breathing erratically. Medical examiners determined that the girl had been raped and sodomized and that she had died from a violent shaking.
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