Girl testifies about incident

Staff report

WARREN

A Harding High School sophomore took the witness stand Thursday and nervously testified that Andre Ervin was “dancing in the street” when she first encountered him on her walk to school Oct. 7.

When he approached her on Summit Street Northwest soon afterward, he grabbed her hand and wanted her to hug him because he was cold, she said during a hearing in Warren Municipal Court.

Ervin asked her questions but then began to talk to himself and to people who weren’t there. She kept trying to get him to let go of her hand, she said.

At two different points, he hugged the girl, now 17, and two times he groped her breasts, she said. It was about 7 a.m.

The girl said she got loose and ran the rest of the way to school and told a friend about it, then talked to a Warren police officer.

At the end of the hearing, Judge Thomas Gysegem bound over the charge of gross sexual imposition, a felony, to a Trumbull County grand jury.

In an earlier hearing, a magistrate ordered that Ervin be evaluated to determine whether he was competent to stand trial after Ervin told the magistrate he was not guilty by reason of insanity.

Judge Gysegem reversed that order, however, and held Thursday’s hearing instead.

Ervin, 47, of Warren, has been charged with 60 criminal offenses in Warren Municipal Court over the past nine years. He’s possibly the city’s most habitual criminal offender.

Ervin was committed to a psychiatric hospital for five years in 1996, one of the few times Ervin’s criminal offenses have brought him before a judge at the Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.

Ervin has been in the Trumbull County jail for the past 16 days. On Thursday, Judge Gysegem sentenced him to 63 more days in jail for violating terms of his probation.

Ervin spoke only momentarily and respectfully during Thursday’s hearing.