• PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A western Pennsylvania veteran who has post-traumatic stress disorder must remain in jail until he stands trial on federal charges that he took a 13-year-old girl across state lines for sex, a federal magistrate ruled Monday.
• Joshua Baker, 31, of Leeper, was charged by state authorities with kidnapping the girl whom he had allegedly met through relatives and begun a sexual relationship with last summer when she was 12.
• Baker was arrested with the girl in Martin, S.D., on April 6, some nine days after he left Pennsylvania with the girl. She told authorities they first tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas but were turned away because she didn't have a passport, FBI Agent Robert Smith testified. Baker and his public defender contest the girl's claim that they tried to enter Mexico but didn't specifically object to any other details of Smith's testimony.
• U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Lenihan determined that Baker was too much of a danger to the community and a risk to flee prosecution for her to release him on house arrest to live with his father, David Baker, of Tionesta, who testified by phone because his health precluded the two-hour trip to Pittsburgh.
• David Baker said his son's behavior has changed for the worse since serving with the military in Iraq and that he has sought counseling and taken medication. He didn't specify when or for which branch his son served.
• "He behaves like a 15- or 16-year-old would, rather childlike in his decision-making," David Baker testified, adding that his son "doesn't seem to connect the dots in understanding the consequences of his actions."
• Though Joshua Baker's federal public defender argued that his PTSD would make pretrial release fairer, the prosecutor argued it would make releasing Baker riskier, and Lenihan agreed.

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