Sex charge involving Harding High victim reduced

WARREN

A charge accusing a city man of groping a Warren G. Harding High School student on her way to school has been remanded back to Warren Municipal Court as a misdemeanor.

On Wednesday, a Trumbull County grand jury declined to indict Andre M. Ervin Jr., 47, on a charge of gross sexual imposition but found probable cause for a misdemeanor charge of sexual imposition.

Misdemeanors are usually handled at the municipal-court level, felonies at the county common pleas court level.

Ervin has been charged in Warren Municipal Court 60 times over the past nine years and was sent by a common pleas court judge to a psychiatric hospital in 1996 after he was indicted on a felony offense.

Police said Ervin approached a 16-year-old girl on the Summit Street bridge at 7 a.m. Oct. 7 and hugged her multiple times, then groped her breasts twice before the girl ran away and reported the incident to police.