CHAMBERSBURG — Thomas Dewald, the 21-year-old Waynesboro man accused of kidnapping a four-year-old child from her Rouzerville home in April, entered a not guilty plea this week in Franklin County Court.
Dewald faces 14 felony charges related to the kidnapping.
Charging documents allege he entered the child’s home the night of April 24 after casing the neighborhood where she lived, looking for possible victims.
He then made his way to a bedroom where the little girl was sleeping with two siblings and picked the girl up and carried her away, according to police reports.
Police later said Dewald had taken her to his grandparents home, then bound her hands, feet, and mouth with black tape and put her inside a chest in his room when he went to work the next day.
She somehow escaped and was found later that morning at the side of a road about 2 1/2 miles from her home.
Dewald is charged with kidnapping in that case and attempted kidnapping in a second home invasion after the child was found.
He allegedly broke into that home through a downstairs window but was scared off by the family’s barking dog.
He faces 14 felony charges from kidnapping in the abduction of the little girl to the attempted kidnapping of the child’s two siblings, attempted kidnapping of three young children who were sleeping upstairs in the second home, burglary, false imprisonment of a minor, corruption of minors and criminal trespass.
He is also charged with indecent assault of a child and recklessly endangering another person, both misdemeanor offenses.
The not-guilty plea will send the case to trial unless prosecutors and defense attorneys work out some kind of plea agreement first.
Meanwhile, he is being held without bail in Franklin County Jail.
