LANCASTER : Man Given Life Term for Assaulting, Killing Baby Girl
A Lancaster man was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for sexually assaulting and killing a 13-month-old girl.
Robert Brian Patalsky, 26, had been found guilty of first-degree murder with special circumstances that could have resulted in the death penalty. But the San Fernando Superior Court jury that found him guilty recommended a life sentence because Patalsky, a former carpet cleaner, had no prior criminal history and because the killing was not premeditated.
Judge Ronald S. Coen imposed the sentence recommended by the jury.
The toddler, Brianna Lee Schmidt, died Nov. 30, 1991, after she had been left by her mother, Patalsky’s girlfriend, in his care while she went shopping. At one point in the day, Patalsky rushed Brianna to a neighbor’s house, saying he had found her in a playpen, covered in vomit and breathing erratically.
Medical examiners later determined, however, that the baby had been raped and sodomized and that she had died from violent shaking.
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