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Man charged in rape of child
YOUNGSTOWN
A city man is jailed on a $150,000 bond after being arraigned in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on charges related to the rape of a child.
Ralph Smith, 32, of Seneca Street, was arraigned on one count of raping a child, who was 5 and 6 years old, between Sept. 1, 2005, and Jan. 23, 2007.
Smith faces a potential life prison term if he’s convicted of the rape charge.
Smith also was indicted on 22 counts of child endangering in the same time frame, pertaining to that child and to another child, who was then between age 7 and 9.
Each child- endangering count carries a potential two-to-eight-year prison term upon conviction.
Atty. John Juhasz was appointed to handle the case. The case has been assigned to the courtroom of Judge James C. Evans.
Smith is scheduled for a pretrial hearing in the case Tuesday.
Officers went to Smith’s Seneca Street address to arrest him last week but got no response at the door. Officers looked through a window and noticed a female lying on a bed in the first-floor living room, but the woman would not let officers into the home.
The woman inside the house at first told officers Smith was not there. Then she said she was unsure who was in the house. Officers decided to force the door open after hearing noises from a second-floor bedroom and seeing curtains move in that same room.
Police removed the woman from the house. She then told officers that Smith was hiding in the attic.
A canine unit was called in and searched the second floor of the house. Smith crawled out of a hatch in the attic and surrendered to police about an hour after officers first reached the North Side dwelling.