YOUNGSTOWN Lawyer: Trial not likely for teen girl

Psychiatrists concluded the 14-year-old does not understand what happened.
By PATRICIA MEADE
VINDICATOR CRIME REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Jackie Colon will likely never stand trial for tossing a baby out a second-floor window, then stabbing him to death, her lawyer says.
Atty. Joseph F. Rafidi said it's doubtful the 14-year-old Roxbury Avenue girl will be declared competent, and she will likely be institutionalized the rest of her life.
Psychiatrists for the prosecution and defense testified at a hearing Monday in Mahoning County Juvenile Court that they have concluded that the girl does not understand what happened Dec. 18, the day Alex Zalovcik died.
Jackie, who has been in the juvenile justice center since being released from a hospital psychiatric ward, will spend the next year in a mental health residential facility, Rafidi said.
Her competency for trial will be re-evaluated after that.
Rafidi said no facility has been found in Ohio and he is trying to find one in Pennsylvania so Jackie can have visits with her mother, Michele. The care will be expensive and funding sources are being sought.
What happened: Alex, a son of Dawn Mraz and Joshua Zalovcik, was stabbed to death in the driveway of the Roxbury home of his mother's friend after being dropped from an upstairs bedroom window.
He would have been 3 months old Dec. 22.
The baby and his mother lived with her parents on Pine Hollow Drive, but the two had spent the night at the friend's house.
Detective Sgt. Daryl Martin, who investigated the homicide, learned that Jackie has a history of mental problems and obtained a list of her medications, which include Ritalin for hyperactivity.
The girl has committed other violent acts, Martin has said.
She once strangled a kitten and also pulled a breathing tube out of a baby's throat in a hospital, he said.
What girl said: Detectives arrested the girl at Chaney High School, where she was in ninth-grade special education classes.
"'Is this about the dead baby?' That is the first thing she said to us," Detective Sgt. Jose Morales said after her arrest.
Police said the girl told them she got up that Monday around 7 a.m., dressed to go to school, then noticed the baby crying as she walked through the living room. She picked up the baby and carried him upstairs, while his mother slept on the couch.
The girl said she went out and stabbed the baby when he continued to cry after landing on the driveway, then took the bus to school before others in the house woke up, police said.
"I was asleep and had him laying next to me on the love seat. ... Jackie took the baby up to her mother's room and did that," the 18-year-old Mraz said at the time, unable to use the words that would describe how Alex had been thrown out the window.
The young mother started crying as she recalled the sight of her baby boy lying in the driveway, his clothing cut away and his skin exposed to the frigid air.