43
Woman charged in boy’s death jailed, awaits probation hearing
YOUNGSTOWN
A woman who served prison time for child endangering and gross abuse of a corpse in the 2001 drowning death and dismemberment of 15-year-old Jimmy P. Higham is jailed as she awaits a probation violation hearing.
The hearing for Jennifer Snyder will be at 1:30 p.m. May 15 before Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
On behalf of the Ohio Adult Parole Authority, Robert J. Andrews, an assistant county prosecutor, has moved to extend or revoke Snyder’s probation, which had been scheduled to end on Jan. 19, 2013.
The APA said Snyder, 39, violated terms of her probation by admitting to her parole officer that she used heroin April 11, by failing to report to her parole officer as instructed, by failing to keep her parole officer informed of her residence and by residing with another probationer without her parole officer’s knowledge or permission.
After Snyder pleaded guilty to child endangering and gross abuse of a corpse, Judge Sweeney sentenced her Dec. 5, 2007, to four years in prison, but released her onto three years of probation on Jan. 20, 2010.
In her judgment entry of judicial release, Judge Sweeney warned Snyder that violation of the terms of her probation could lead to imposition of the remainder of her prison term.
Snyder reported the boy missing about six months after he died and gave police another statement on the matter in late 2007.
Based on her second statement, police charged David Sharpe, 49, with Higham’s murder.
Judge Sweeney sentenced Sharpe to 71/2 years in prison in April 2009 after he pleaded guilty to reckless homicide, attempted tampering with evidence and gross abuse of a corpse.
Sharpe and his girlfriend, Snyder, resided in a Manchester Avenue house when the boy died around June 15, 2001, during what authorities said was a domestic dispute. Police believe the boy drowned in the bathtub during the dispute. Snyder is a sister of the boy’s father’s second wife.
The boy’s body was dismembered and disposed of in trash bins on the city’s South and West sides and ended up in the Carbon Limestone landfill in Poland, where it would be nearly impossible to find, prosecutors said.
Not having a body would have made prosecuting Sharpe for murder difficult, said Robert E. Bush Jr., who was chief of the criminal division of the county prosecutor’s office when Sharpe was sentenced.