Testimony under way in Curtis Young murder trial

YOUNGSTOWN — Mary Moore said she couldn’t understand why her sister, Helen Moore, would slowly be turning left near Curtis Young’s North Center Street residence, where there was no intersecting street to turn onto; then she noticed that her sister’s car had left the road and turned onto its side.

“I started screaming and telling 911 what I saw” by cellular phone, Mary Moore testified today in Young’s capital murder trial.

She testified she screamed at Young, who was standing outside his residence: “What did you do?”

Then she heard her niece, Ashley Moore, screaming from the back seat of the overturned car: “He killed my mother! He killed my mother!”

Mary Moore and others helped Ashley, then 11, and Ashley’s 5-year-old sister, Maia, out of the back seat, but firefighters later extricated Helen Moore and her 8-year-old son, Ceonei, from the car’s front seat.

Young, 26, is charged with aggravated murder with firearm and death penalty specifications in the July 31, 2007, deaths of his ex-girlfriend, Helen Moore, 29, and her nearly full-term unborn child, both having perished at the scene, and of Ceonei, who was pronounced dead the next morning in St. Elizabeth Health Center.

A nine-woman, three-man jury is hearing the case, over which Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, is presiding.

For the complete story, see Tuesday’s Vindicator and Vindy.com