Jury selection begins in Zechar rape trial

The 12-year-old girl said she was raped after being given alcohol and pills.

STAFF REPORT

YOUNGSTOWN — Jury selection resumes today for the trial of a 27-year-old city man charged with raping a 12-year-old female relative in his pickup truck in a Boardman cemetery after giving her alcohol and pills.

Michael Zechar is on trial on three counts of rape before Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. If he’s convicted, Zechar, of Compton Lane, faces a potential sentence of life in prison. Jury selection began Tuesday.

The charges stem from an assault that allegedly occurred the evening of May 5, 2007, in Lake Park Cemetery.

The girl told police Zechar gave her a soft drink mixed with rum and two pills he said were over-the-counter pain relievers.

An hour after drinking the mixture and taking the pills, she began feeling “unusual,” the alleged victim later told police.

Zechar asked her to ride with him to a store, and she agreed, the girl told police. Instead of going to a store, Zechar drove her directly to the cemetery, where he attacked her, and her attempts to fight him off were unsuccessful, the alleged victim told police.

When they returned to Zechar’s residence, the girl said she began to lose consciousness and remembered nothing more until she woke up in St. Elizabeth Health Center, where she had been taken by ambulance.

Police interviewed the girl at the hospital where she had been treated for an overdose, impounded Zechar’s truck and interviewed Zechar, who denied furnishing the girl alcohol and assaulting her.

Boardman police arrested Zechar after interviewing him. At the end of the interview, Zechar admitted being sexually involved with the girl and requested to have a lawyer present, police said.