First witnesses testify in Beshara trial

YOUNGSTOWN — As he was preparing to go to church, Andy Leone was startled by the squealing of car tires outside his South Side residence early on a summer Sunday morning as he sat on his porch drinking coffee and reading a magazine.

“It ran over something. What, I didn’t know,” Leone testified Friday morning in the trial of Benjamin Beshara, 33 who is charged with kidnapping, robbing and killing Marilyn Guthrie, 61, of Niles, by driving her own car over her.

Leone, of Hudson Avenue, said he saw the car back up, fishtail, stop, and then pull forward on Parkcliff Avenue near Hudson Avenue between 8 and 8:30 a.m. on July 10, 2005, before speeding off toward Market Street.

Thinking the car might have hit a fallen tree limb, Leone went to investigate, finding a sneaker and a woman, later identified as Guthrie, lying face down on the pavement. He testified that he ran home and called 911 and that police and an ambulance arrived within minutes.

Leone was among the first witnesses to testify as Martin P. Desmond, assistant Mahoning County prosecutor, began presenting his case in Beshara’s trial before a six-man, six-woman jury in the courtroom of Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. If convicted of kidnapping, aggravated robbery and aggravated murder, Beshara faces 26 years in prison to life without parole.