YOUNGSTOWN Couple takes child from sitter, then flees

Police said the child's mother doesn't have custody.
YOUNGSTOWN -- Police are looking for a city woman and her boyfriend after they took the woman's daughter away from her baby sitter.
The woman didn't have custody of her daughter, police said.
According to reports, the 24-year-old baby sitter, Cheryl Hartman, was watching the girl Friday night at a Newbern Circle home when the child's grandmother called shortly before midnight and said the mother and her boyfriend were drunk and on their way there.
When Hartman refused the couple entry, the mother forced her way in through a window, assaulted the baby sitter, removed the girl from a bed in the living room and left through the front door, reports say.
The couple fled the area with the girl in a gray box-type car. Struthers police officers attempted to stop the vehicle, but it crashed into a house and the occupants fled on foot.
The girl later told police her mother took her into the woods and led her to Interstate 680, where they flagged down a motorist and were taken to the grandmother's home on East Ravenwood Avenue. The child said her mother told her to enter the house, while she drove away in another vehicle.
Taken to hospital
The girl was taken to Tod Children's Hospital by her grandmother, who has sole custody of the child, for injuries to her arm, reports said.
Police were unable to locate the mother and her boyfriend, but Hartman and the girl's father, Joseph Direnzo, 32, of Richland Avenue, were taken into custody on warrants for failure to appear in court last week.
Hartman was originally charged with having no operator's license. Direnzo, who failed to appear on a suspended license charge, was also arrested on an order from the Adult Parole Authority on an aggravated burglary charge.
Both were released on bond.