YOUNGSTOWN SLAYING Teen returns to juvenile center
The girl had been in an Oklahoma facility since October.
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A 15-year-old girl accused of killing a 3-month-old baby in December 2000 has returned from an Oklahoma residential mental health facility to the Mahoning County juvenile detention center.
Jackie Colon had been sent to the out-of-state facility in October after being held in the detention center of the Martin P. Joyce Juvenile Justice Center since the infant's death.
She returned here last week .
Juvenile court personnel said Juvenile Judge Theresa Dellick held a court hearing during which she appointed a lawyer to serve as Jackie's in-court guardian. The judge will conduct a hearing to determine Jackie's competency and the girl will remain in the detention center until a decision is made as to where she should be placed. There are no state-run mental health facilities for juveniles in Ohio.
About the case: Authorities suspect Jackie of throwing infant Alex Zalovcik out a second-floor window of her family's Roxbury home onto the concrete driveway below Dec. 18, 2000. She then went outside and stabbed the infant nearly 60 times, authorities say. The mother of the infant had spent the night at the home. She was Jackie's sister's friend.
Jackie was placed in the juvenile detention center after the death and spent time in a hospital psychiatric ward. She was found mentally incompetent to stand trial in March 2001 and ordered into a residential treatment facility. Because there are no state-run facilities in Ohio, local officials placed Jackie in the Oklahoma facility.
Jackie's mother, Michele Colon of Austintown declined to comment for this story, referring to a gag order placed on her by Judge Dellick. Lawyers involved in the case are also not permitted to speak about the case.
Colon has said she would work to force Ohio to provide mental health facilities for juveniles like Jackie.
Judge Dellick also has said she would address the issue.
Mother's problems: The girl's placement out of state caused hardship for her and her daughter, Colon has said.
Compounding the problem, Colon said, is that she was ordered to pay child-support costs and has been unable to afford to travel to see her daughter as much as she would like.
Colon has a lawsuit pending in U.S. District Court in Youngstown, seeking more than $3 million in damages from several Mahoning County mental health agencies and providers, Forum Health and the D & amp;E Counseling Center of Youngstown.
The suit alleges the agencies provided inadequate care for Jackie's psychiatric conditions, which ultimately resulted in her committing the crime.
It also accuses the county of wrongful imprisonment and cruel and unusual punishment because Jackie was held in the juvenile detention facility for months after being ordered into a treatment facility.