Trial witnesses tell details of killing at youth football game

By John W. Goodwin Jr.

YOUNGSTOWN — The murder trial for 27-year-old Anthony M. Caulton got under way with detailed accounts from witnesses at the field where a man was fatally shot nearly three years ago.

Caulton, of East Auburndale Avenue, is accused of fatally shooting Larry D. Jones, 31, of Ravenwood Avenue, at the former South High Stadium football field during a youth football game in 2006.

In her opening statement Wednesday, Dawn Cantalamessa, an assistant Mahoning County prosecutor, told the panel of jurors in common pleas court, “The defendant Anthony Caulton is a cold-blooded killer with no regard for others, including the safety of little children attending a peewee football game.”

Cantalamessa said Caulton was counting on no one wanting to get involved in the case or coming forward. She said only two witnesses came forward to testify.

Atty. Lynn Maro, representing Caulton, told the jurors that police were under pressure to make an arrest in the case and, in their haste, focused on Caulton.

She said witnesses only came forward after days of Caulton’s face appearing on television and in the newspaper.

“Protocol was not followed. Procedure was not followed, and as a result, the process to solve the case was tainted,” Maro said in her opening statement.

The first witness to testify for the state was Letricia Jones, the mother of the victim, Larry Jones. She recounted the last time she saw her son alive before he headed out to the football game to watch his nephews play.

Through tears, she told the court she did not have the chance to speak with her son again.

Maro questioned the victim’s mother, who later said information she supplied to police in the days after the shooting came from things she heard from various other people.

Denise Leonard, another woman who was at the football game at the time of the shooting, was called to testify but admitted she had no interest in testifying or being involved in the case. She said she knew Jones as an acquaintance, but did not know Caulton other than seeing him around town.

Leonard said she saw Jones and Caulton “tussling and fighting” over a gun in the bleachers of the stadium but was unsure of who pulled the gun out. She said she ran at the sound of the gunshots.

She also said she did not see the shooting but ultimately identified Caulton as the person holding the gun.

The prosecution’s third witness was Christopher Thomas, who stopped by the field to meet his daughter and watch his two grandsons play.

Thomas said he was watching the game when he noticed Jones running toward him and heard someone holler “Gun!”

He said he then saw an armed man shoot Jones as he tried to jump over a railing separating the bleachers from the football field.

The armed man, Thomas said, started to walk away, then came back and fired several more shots into Jones as he lay on the ground.

Thomas said Jones lay on the ground with others praying over him. He said Jones kept trying to stand, saying he did not want to die there.

Thomas identified Caulton as the shooter by pointing at Caulton in open court. He said Jones did not have a firearm at all.

Thomas told the court he made a diagram of the shooting shortly after the incident so he would not forget the details.

Thomas, upon questioning from Maro, said he actually had made two diagrams, and some of the information on one diagram had been taken from an account of a co-worker.

Thomas said he did not need to view television or the newspaper to remember what took place and who was involved because he looked directly at Caulton during the shooting.

Danielle Howard, a friend of the Jones family, said she was at the field and saw the scuffle between Jones and another man but did not witness the actual shooting.

jgoodwin@vindy.com