Man convicted for shooting boy on lawn

BATAVIA, Ohio (AP) — A jury Thursday convicted a man of murder for shooting a teenage neighbor who walked on his obsessively maintained lawn.

A six-man, six-woman jury deliberated less than four hours before finding Charles Martin, 67, guilty of murder. Martin was tried on a charge of aggravated murder, but jurors convicted him on the lesser count of murder because they could not agree that the killing was planned.

Martin will be sentenced May 23. He faces imprisonment of 15 years to life, with three additional years for using a gun.

Martin didn’t testify in his two-day trial in the death of Larry Mugrage Jr., 15. The defense didn’t dispute that Martin shot the boy after he stepped on the lawn that Martin meticulously cared for, mowing it up to five times a week. But defense attorney R. Scott Croswell III told jurors that Martin, who lived alone, had been harassed for years by Mugrage and other youths in the neighborhood.