YOUNGSTOWN Mother testifies in baby's murder

Jurors wiped tears from their eyes as they listened to the 911 tape.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Jiyen C. Dent Sr. couldn't fathom what had just happened to his infant son.
The family was sitting quietly in their living room about 11:30 p.m., watching a movie and smelling a pizza baking in the oven. Dent's girlfriend, LaToya Butler, had just walked into the kitchen to check on the pizza.
Suddenly, they heard gunshots just outside. Chunks of plaster and wood were blasted off the living room wall as bullets tore through the house.
Butler, the baby's mother, screamed from the kitchen to grab the baby. Dent scooped the boy -- still sitting in a plastic swing -- into his arms and dove into a hallway for cover. That's when he looked down and saw blood on the child's face and a small hole just below the baby's left eye.
"He was laying there with his eyes open, but he wasn't moving," Dent said, a dazed look on his face. "I shook his leg. He still wouldn't move."
Dent was telling jurors in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court what happened the night his East Side house was sprayed with bullets from an AK-47 assault rifle in March. He and Butler escaped injury. The baby, 3-month-old Jiyen C. Dent Jr., was fatally shot in the head.
Murder charges
Two men are charged in the slaying. One of them, 21-year-old Wayne Gilliam of Euclid Avenue, is on trial in common pleas court. He is charged with multiple counts of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, felonious assault and firing into a habitation.
A second man, John Drummond Jr. of Allerton Court, is awaiting trial on identical charges. Authorities say Drummond fired the shots and Gilliam aided him by driving him to and from the scene.
Butler testified that it was the family's fourth night in their new home on Rutledge Drive. She broke down in tears, sobbing heavily, when assistant prosecutor Kelly Johns showed her a photograph of Jiyen Jr.
Dent said the family had just settled in to relax after a day of work and moving into the Rutledge Drive house when the gunfire erupted outside.
Prosecutors played an audiotape recording of a call Dent made to 911 just after the shooting. After pleading for help, Dent put down the telephone and went to check on the baby. Then the sound of Butler screaming and sobbing in the background could be heard on the tape. Jurors wiped tears from their eyes as they listened to her wailing the baby's name.
Butler's testimony
Butler told the jury of 11 women and one man that she didn't immediately realize the baby was shot because she had ducked low in the kitchen. The shots, Butler said, sounded like "bombs going off all around the house."
At one point during Butler's testimony, Judge Maureen A. Cronin sent the jury out of the courtroom for a 10-minute break because Butler was sobbing too heavily to continue.
Defense attorney Damian Billak did not cross-examine either of the parents.
In his opening statement, assistant prosecutor Timothy Franken said Drummond was upset that the family had moved into the neighborhood from the South Side.
He said Gilliam drove Drummond to Drummond's sister's house on Rutledge and waited while Drummond got out of the car, walked about 25 yards up the street and opened fire on the Dent/Butler house across the street. When Drummond got back into the car, Gilliam drove away with the car's lights off, Franken said.
The trial was to continue today.
bjackson@vindy.com