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Lambing faces 7 felonies in connection with 4-year-old's death

Keith Jordan Lambing could be sentenced to death for the March 21 death of a 4-year-old at a Super 8 motel.

Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger said his office will seek the death penalty for Keith Jordan Lambing, the man charged with homicide in the death of 4-year-old Bentley Thomas Miller.

All charges against Lambing were bound for county court Thursday afternoon, meaning the criminal cases will proceed.

Goldinger's announcement that he would seek the death penalty came amid two separate preliminary hearings for Lambing, 20, at the Butler County Government Center.

The first case focuses on Bentley's death on the morning of March 21, after what investigators say was a brutal sexual assault in a room at the Super 8 motel on Route 8 in Butler Township. In that case Lambing has been charged with one felony count each of criminal homicide, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with serious bodily injury, rape of a child, rape of a child with serious bodily injury, aggravated indecent assault of a child, aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of children, and one misdemeanor count of recklessly endangering another person.

On Thursday prosecutors called Dr. Todd Luckasevic of the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office to the stand, where he testified that an autopsy determined Bentley died from blood loss after suffering a sexual assault that left him with external and internal injuries. According to court documents Bentley was pronounced dead at 10:15 a.m. March 21, at Butler Memorial Hospital, where he was taken after losing consciousness in the car of Lambing's mother, Kristen Herold, after she picked him up from the motel that morning.

Investigators have accused Herold of assisting Lambing's attempt to elude a police search after Bentley's death, and she has been charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, endangering the welfare of children, and recklessly endangering another person.

In court on Thursday prosecutors sought to draw a link between Bentley's injuries and Lambing, with detective Thomas Vensel of Butler Township Police testifying that police interviews with Lambing, Herold, and Mac-Kenzie Paige Peters, who is Bentley's mother, determined Lambing was the only adult in the room at the time of the assault.

Paige, who has been charged with child endangerment, left the motel at about 6:30 a.m. that morning, Vensel testified, and the only other person in the room with Lambing and Bentley after her departure was a 4-month-old child.

Defense attorney Frankie Walker III, who is representing Lambing in the homicide case, disputed prosecutors' theory of the case Thursday. Walker argued that the rape charge against Lambing should be dismissed because investigators have failed to produce physical evidence linking Lambing to the assault or Bentley's injuries.

“What they have at this point is: he's in a room prior (to Bentley's death),” Walker said.

Goldinger said Thursday that prosecutors are awaiting the results of DNA tests, and that the investigation into how Bentley's injuries were inflicted is also ongoing.

District Judge Kevin O'Donnell held all charges for court in the homicide case.

In a separate hearing immediately following O'Donnell's ruling, prosecutors also presented evidence that Lambing had attempted to organize an escape attempt from Butler County Prison. Those charges are based on a taped phone call between Lambing and his grandmother and a note found in Lambing's cell in March.

Prosecutors argued that the note, which referenced getting someone to break Lambing out of a “paddy wagon” on a court date, and Lambing's call to his grandmother constituted a “substantial” action toward carrying out the plan.

Joseph Smith, the public defender representing Lambing in the escape case, accused prosecutors of “piling on” and filing the charges frivolously.

Smith argued that Lambing is a young man who indulged in a “flight of fancy,” that was never in danger of being put into motion.

“This is a ridiculous thought,” Smith said of the escape plan. “This is a flight of fancy, and the commonwealth is jumping on it.”

District Judge William T. Fullerton held the single felony charge of escape for court Thursday, and declined to set a bond in the case.

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