An East Vandergrift man has been accused of harassing Allegheny Township District Judge Cheryl Peck Yakopec with late-night phone calls.

Tyler Drew Zidek, 25, of East Vandergrift faces several misdemeanor charges of harassment by a communication device.

Zidek has a criminal record, including a guilty plea for body-slamming a teenage girl in the Westmoreland Mall in 2019.

Yakopec was home when she received a string of phone calls on her landline starting after midnight Nov. 22, according to a criminal complaint. She picked up one of the calls, and a man said, “Is this the (expletive) Cheryl?”

Yakopec told the Tribune-Review, “I hung up as soon as he said the ‘c-word’ and my name, and it started ringing immediately again. I didn’t answer it, with him calling about 10 times. And then I took the phone off the hook.”

Lower Burrell police Detective Sgt. Zachary Beam and Detective Brandon Nedley, along with a Westmoreland County detective, “peeled the onion,” according to Yakopec, to trace the origin of the calls.

Police investigators discovered that the caller was using an application that hides a caller’s true phone number and identity. They secured two search warrants with communications companies to trace the phone to Zidek’s East Vandergrift home, according to the complaint.

Police documented Zidek calling Yakopec 13 times, the complaint said.

Police said they visited Zidek’s home Jan. 10, and he eventually admitted to calling Yakopec to “inconvenience her like she inconvenienced me.” He told police he had been in her courtroom several times over the years and that her staff was “corrupt and he wasn’t treated fairly,” the complaint said.

Yakopec said, “It’s very alarming that people are beginning to take their aggression in their cases — whether criminal, civil or domestic — out on the judge.”

Zidek’s history of brushes with the law suggests he has an “anger management problem” and is taking it out on her and her staff, Yakopec said.

“It’s unfair. We are doing our job,” she said. “It’s nothing personal against him.”

The thought of people harassing or harming judges could deter good people from seeking spots on the bench, Yakopec said. She pointed to a double homicide in 2020 where the son of a New Jersey judge and an attorney were shot to death at the front door of the judge’s home.

Yakopec said she hopes Zidek “suffers the full force of the law, and hopefully will get the help he needs.” She also thanked the police for their speedy work.

According to court records, Zidek received a summons in the mail for his preliminary hearing Feb. 13 before District Judge Jason Buczak in Washington Township.

No attorney was listed in court records for Zidek, who could not be reached for comment.

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