Victims testify about beatings, robberies

All three victims reported being struck in the head and left bloodied.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Jerome Jablonski told jurors in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court how he found his battered brother, William Sovak, by following a trail of blood to Sovak's fruit cellar.
Then Jablonski turned his face away from the jurors and began to sob loudly.
"There was so much blood on his face I could hardly recognize him," Jablonski said. "He looked so horrible. It was unbelievable."
Jablonski was among the first witnesses to testify Wednesday in the trial of James Goins and Chad Barnette, both 17 and both being tried as adults on multiple counts of attempted aggravated murder, receiving stolen property, aggravated burglary, felonious assault and kidnapping.
Prosecutors say the teen-agers forced their way into Sovak's home on Miller Street and into the Marmion Avenue home of Louis and Elizabeth Luchisan, brutally beat the occupants and robbed them in January 2001.
Forced inside: Sovak, who was 83 at the time, told jurors he'd gone outside to get his newspaper when two young men jumped him and forced him back into the house.
Once inside, one of the suspects started checking out each room while the other one, whom he identified as Barnette, knocked him to the floor and punched him in the face.
Each time Sovak tried to get up, he was punched and knocked down again. Eventually, Barnette started kicking him, he said.
When Sovak finally got to his feet, Barnette picked up a telephone and hit him over the head several times with the base. Barnette held the phone at an angle to strike Sovak with a metal plate on the bottom of the phone, Sovak said.
Some of the people in the courtroom audience cried softly as they listened to Sovak, now 84.
Sovak said he'd been shopping earlier that day and had $15 left in his wallet, which the intruders stole. They threw him down his basement steps, dragged him through the basement and locked him in a fruit cellar.
Jablonski said there was a screwdriver jammed into the lock on the outside of the door, preventing Sovak from getting out.
"There was blood everywhere," he said.
Couple's ordeal: Louis Luchisan, 64, uses a wheelchair and a walker because of previous health problems. He sobbed heavily during his testimony, starting even before the first question was asked.
His wife, 60, described him to jurors as "pretty much helpless."
Luchisan said two young men kicked in a door to their home and demanded money. One of them hit him in the forehead with a plate, causing a gash that took five stitches to close.
Mrs. Luchisan said the other suspect led her room to room at gunpoint demanding money. She gave him $167 cash plus some loose change, and he asked for more. When she said there was no more, he hit her over the head with the gun and split her head open, she said.
"I thought we were going to be killed," she said. "I didn't think we would make it."
The intruders took the family's television set and car before leaving, the Luchisans said. Neither of them could identify the intruders, however.
bjackson@vindy.com