A judge Tuesday sentenced the last of three defendants in the fatal 2024 stabbing of a mentally ill man at an abandoned Pittsburgh house.
Carlena Wells, 20, was sentenced to 2½ to 5 years in prison on a conspiracy to commit aggravated assault charge in the March 2024 death of Marc Kovach, 37.
Police said Kovach, who was schizophrenic, was beaten and stabbed, then his corpse was hidden under the porch of an empty West End house.
Attorney Thomas N. Farrell, who represented Wells, said his client is autistic. He asked Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Simquita R. Bridges to help rehabilitate Wells by sending her to a group home with around-the-clock care.
Prosecutors pushed back.
“Her role was admittedly less than anybody else’s but that doesn’t change the fact that a family is left without a son,” Allegheny County Assistant District Attorney John Fitzgerald said.
While Bridges opted for incarceration, the victim’s older sister said the three people involved in the killing did not face adequate justice.
“Even if she did not kill my brother, she stood there and watched and did nothing,” Misty Kovach, 46, of Port Vue, said while speaking during the sentencing. She criticized the defendants’ sentences.
Dominic Johnson, now 21, Wells’ boyfriend at the time of the attack, negotiated a guilty plea in April 2025 to third-degree murder and conspiracy, according to police and court records. Bridges sentenced him to 13 to 26 years in prison.
Just three months later, Logan Smetanka, also now 21, negotiated a guilty plea on conspiracy to commit third-degree murder, court records show. Bridges sentenced him to 4 to 8 years in prison.
Attorneys for both men declined comment Tuesday.
Police initially said the crime unfolded on March 16, 2024, when Johnson was hanging out with Kovach in a home on Steuben Street. Johnson attacked Kovach for touching Wells, according to a criminal complaint.
At least two witnesses whom police did not identify in court records told authorities they were present during the attack.
One witness told police that Johnson and Wells were “stomping” on Kovach at the house, the complaint said. Investigators said they were told by a witness that Johnson and Smetanka knocked Kovach unconscious. Johnson then dragged an unconscious Kovach toward the porch of the house, according to the complaint.
Pittsburgh police were dispatched to Steuben Street five days after the crime when someone called 911 to report a body. Responding officers found Kovach dead in a dried pool of blood under the front porch of the home, the complaint said.
He had been stabbed multiple times in the abdomen. Kovach was lying face-up on the ground, with a black jacket covering his chest.
Misty Kovach told TribLive Tuesday that her younger brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia after he started growing increasingly paranoid while studying at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Smoking marijuana appeared to exacerbate his mental health issues, she said. Marc Kovach, one of three children, was involuntarily committed to a hospital for mental health treatment at least once, his sister said.
Misty Kovach said she helped her brother get an apartment in Glassport. The family, however, did not know where he was living at the time of his death.
Farrell, Wells’ attorney, told the judge his client “had a rough life, a very difficult life.”
Wells herself briefly apologized to Kovach’s family.
“I just want to say I do feel remorseful for what I’ve done,” Wells said. “I’m just sorry.”
“My brother was mentally ill and we really didn’t figure that out until a couple years ago,” Misty Kovach said on the witness stand. “He also had a rough life. But he did not hurt people. That’s not an excuse.”
