HOLLIDAYSBURG — A former Johnstown man who violated probation conditions forbidding contact with an ex-girlfriend who used to live in Altoona will now be serving a state prison sentence.

Robert L. Stevenson-Watts, 34, who was sentenced in Blair County Court in April 2023 to four to 12 months’ incarceration, followed by three years’ probation for terroristic threats and harassment, was resentenced Monday to 12 to 36 months’ incarceration.

Stevenson-Watts, who has been held in the county prison since his June arrest in New Jersey by the U.S. Marshals Service, is expected to be transferred at some point to a state prison. Blair County court records show he has pending witness intimidation and related charges scheduled for review on Jan. 28.

Chief Public Defender Russ Montgomery said it will be up to the state Department of Corrections to calculate Stevenson-Watts’ credit for time served and when Stevenson-Watts becomes eligible for release, based on the sentence Kagarise imposed Monday.

Kagarise, who was familiar with the case from having presided over a trial-by-court in November 2022, asked Stevenson-Watts on Monday what it was going to take to get him to stop violating probationary conditions.

Stevenson-Watts tried to tell Kagarise that it was the woman who had been contacting him through social media applications, including ones where she asked for cash.

When Ka­­garise initially sentenced Stevenson-Watts in April 2023, the judge acknowledged his con­cern for the woman who testified in court about how she started receiving threatening social media messages from Stevenson-Watts on Sept. 10, 2021, the day after he was released from Cambria County Prison.

Stevenson-Watts was in Cambria County Prison serving time for having held the woman hostage in the attic of an abandoned house in Johnstown. The pair had a previous romantic relationship.

In court Monday, Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Mays asked Kagarise to consider re-sentencing Stevenson-Watts to a county prison sentence of 12 to 24 months, minus a day, to address

Stevenson-Watts’ probationary violation.

Montgomery referred to a presentence report suggesting three to 23 months’ in the county prison for the probation violation, prompting Mays to remind the judge of Stevenson-Watts’ “numerous” at­­tempts to contact the ex-girlfriend.

“He keeps re-victimizing the same victim,” Mays said.

When Kagarise handed down Stevenson-Watts’ initial sentence of four to 12 months’ incarceration, followed by three years’ probation in April 2023, he stressed the need for

Stevenson-Watts to avoid contact with the woman. At that sentencing hearing, Kagarise warned Stevenson-Watts that if he violated that condition, then he would be going to a state prison.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.