Pittsburgh man gets death penalty in state prison guard's death
A Pittsburgh man already serving a life sentence for the 2014 murder of a man in Pittsburgh faces the death penalty in the murder of a guard at the state prison in Somerset.
Paul J. Kendrick, 30, was sentenced to death Thursday by a Somerset County jury for the Feb. 15, 2018 beating death of Sgt. Mark Baserman, 60, a corrections officer at SCI Somerset.
Baserman died 11 days after the beating on Feb. 15, 2018, in which the guard was kicked in the head.
Kendrick was charged with the homicide and assault by a prisoner in March 2018. He was convicted of homicide last month by a Somerset County jury.
Pittsburgh police charged Kendrick, then 19, with criminal homicide and conspiracy to commit homicide in an August 2014 murder in Pittsburgh, for which he was convicted in Allegheny County Court in 2015.
That conviction was for a fatal shooting of a man that occurred during a dispute at a basketball court in the Northview Heights section of the city, according to testimony during the capital penalty phase of the trial.
Joe Napsha is a TribLive reporter covering Irwin, North Huntingdon and the Norwin School District. He also writes about business issues. He grew up on Neville Island and has worked at the Trib since the early 1980s. He can be reached at jnapsha@triblive.com.
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.