A Pennsylvania father has been sentenced to a maximum of four years in state prison for allowing his 13-year-old daughter to drink 17 shots of vodka until she passed out and had to be hospitalized.
Charles Younger, 39, of Allentown, learned his fate on Monday after previously pleading guilty to child endangerment.
The girl’s mother, 32-year-old Michelle Edwards, also had pleaded guilty to the charge after admitting that she took her daughter to a liquor store. She was sentenced to 23 months in Lehigh County Jail last week.
Police say the parents provided their daughter and another 15-year-old girl with alcohol for the daughter’s 13th birthday in January.
Cops were called to the family’s home in the 1900 block of Union Boulevard in Allentown on the night of January 7 after the 13-year-old vomited and passed out, having consumed 17 shots of vodka in a span of two hours.
The teen was taken by EMS to Sacred Heart Hospital and later airlifted by helicopter to Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, where doctors found that her blood-alcohol level was at .32 percent, which is four times the state’s legal limit to drive.
Younger and Edwards fled the scene as paramedics arrived. The father later told a judge he ‘just panicked’ when he heard the sirens, but eventually returned, reported the Allentown Morning Call.
During a court hearing last month, Younger said his kids ‘mean everything’ to him.
On Monday, Younger took full responsibility for the incident, telling Lehigh County Judge James T. Anthony, ‘My stupidity caused my kids to lose both their parents.’
The 39-year-old man has an extensive criminal record, including past convictions for armed robbery and aggravated assault.
At her own sentencing on June 6, a tearful Michelle Edwards, who has four children, told the court, ‘this taught me a lesson.’
The Morning Call reported earlier that Edwards had been free on $20,000 bail but was remanded to jail a few days before her sentencing because she was caught using heroin.