Butler man gets parole in baseball bat attack
A Butler man was paroled on time served in Butler County Court on Thursday after being sentenced to assault with a baseball bat last summer.
Marc A. Pippens Jr., 28, was sentenced to time served to one year in jail by Judge William Shaffer, and was immediately paroled.
Pippens also faces a probation violation case in Allegheny County, and will be returned there to face that case. He was also ordered to pay court costs.
Pippens previously pleaded guilty to misdemeanor simple assault on Jan. 16.
The misdemeanor charge to which he pleaded was later added, and the remaining charge was dismissed as part of the plea.
The initial charge was filed by the Butler police after a report that Pippens attacked his ex-girlfriend's father with a baseball bat, causing 59-year-old Richard Kroll to be hospitalized with a head injury.
Police said Pippens hit Kroll, of Connoquenessing Township, with a ball bat after Kroll had gone to his daughter's home to remove Pippens, who apparently had been living there, too.
The two eventually got into a scuffle, with Kroll being hit in the face several times, before Pippens grabbed the bat that Kroll had brought with him and hit Kroll on the left side of the head “a couple times,” documents said.
Brittany Kroll recounted that when she got home she saw Pippens standing over her father, who was “laying in a pool of blood on a couch cushion,” according to a police affidavit.
Pippens then ran off when she called 911, police said.
Kroll was taken to Butler Memorial Hospital for injuries, and Pippens was later arrested after being seen running on the side of a creek bed in nearby woods.
Pippens previously pleaded guilty to misdemeanor simple assault on Jan. 16, after initially being charged with felony aggravated assault in an incident on North Sixth Avenue in Butler Aug. 16.
