MAHONING COUNTY Defendants blame each other

An assistant prosecutor said several people saw the beating but did not try to help the woman.
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Robert Blackshear and Christopher Love share the same defendants' table in a Mahoning County Common Pleas Court courtroom.
But they couldn't be farther apart.
The two city men accused of the beating death of a 44-year-old Victory Annex woman in July 1999 are on opposing sides, and pointing the finger at each other.
Blackshear, like the prosecutor, says Love is the one who kicked and jumped on Olivia Hubbert until broken bones in her neck asphyxiated her.
Love says Blackshear administered the beating. Witnesses won't side with him, he says, because they are afraid.
Murder charges
Both Blackshear, 44, and Love, 25, face a murder charge in the case, which assistant prosecutor Robert J. Andrews described as "the bucket, the knife and the nude body," during opening statements Thursday. The men are being tried before the same jury in Judge Robert G. Lisotto's courtroom.
Andrews said that, after a night of Fourth of July parties, Blackshear and Hubbert had an argument the morning of July 5 in Victory Annex, a government-subsidized housing complex on the city's East Side, bounded by Magnolia and Stewart avenues.
Hubbert brought out a butcher knife, which Blackshear knocked from her hands with a bucket. He chased her down the street with the knife until she tripped on a curb. There, he used the knife to beat her.
Love showed up and punched Hubbert, kicking and jumping on her after she fell to the ground. The pair then tried to bum cigarettes from a nearby apartment before Love beat her again and they carried her to her apartment, Andrews said.
Witnesses said they heard Hubbert breathing "like she was gasping for her last breath," but "no one helps Olivia and no one calls for help," the prosecutor said.
She was discovered the next day, with her pants pulled down and her shirt pulled up, after her mother called police to say she had not shown up at work.
Says he ended argument
Blackshear's attorney, Martin E. Yavorcik, said the altercation began when Hubbert asked his client for crack cocaine, and he told her: "Go on, get out of here. I don't sell drugs anymore."
Yavorcik said Blackshear took the knife from Hubbert and chased her, but came to his senses and ended the argument before Love arrived.
It was then that Love beat the woman, the attorney said. He said that Blackshear also never helped Love place Hubbert in her apartment, that it was another man.
Blackshear went to city police as soon as he discovered that Hubbert had died, Yavorcik said, waiting there an hour to tell what he saw.
He has since been in jail for three years.
"Robert Blackshear has asked you here for one reason and one reason only," Yavorcik told the jury. "To right a wrong."
But Love's attorney, Paul Conn, said fear runs the Victory Annex neighborhood and forced witnesses to modify their stories and point at Love.
Conn said Love admits that he lost his temper and smacked Hubbert, but said he did not kill her.
"Someone brutally attacked Miss Hubbert, someone without fear," Conn said.
Fear factor
That someone was Blackshear, Conn said, an "important man" in Victory Annex who is feared on the street and who went to police after learning what other witnesses were saying to investigators.
"Fear is the one thread that runs through this entire case," Conn said. "The only one who didn't show fear is Robert Blackshear."
viviano@vindy.com