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Man continues fighting charges
YOUNGSTOWN
Duniek Christian has been fighting charges in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court since 2005, and now he is before a jury pleading his case against charges that he ran from police in a 2010 police pursuit.
Police contend they were trying to serve felony arrest warrants on 27-year-old Christian in November 2010, but the wanted man drove his car through a fence and backyards on the East Side to avoid capture. There were two other men in the car with Christian when the purported chase took place.
Dawn Cantalamessa, an assistant county prosecutor, and Atty. Walter Madison, representing Christian, argued their cases before an all-female jury Tuesday afternoon in the courtroom of Judge James C. Evans.
Youngstown Police Officer Michael Marciano told the court he was a member of the task force assigned to get Christian in November 2010. He said multiple officers converged on a Northwood Avenue home Christian was known to frequent.
Marciano said the task force van pulled into a Northwood driveway and right up to the bumper of a car with three people inside. He said he recognized the man behind the wheel to be Christian before the car started and took off through a fence and surrounding yards.
“Our plan was to position police all around to prevent escape. ... The vehicle started up and drove straight through a fence or stockade and through the rear yards,” he said.
Marciano found Christian about 300 yards from the start of the chase hiding under bushes and leaves.
Madison, on cross- examination, questioned how Marciano could positively identify his client as the car’s driver when he was in a position where the officer could see only the back of Christian’s head.
He also pointed out that Marciano would have had mere seconds to see Christian before the car drove off.
Officer Brian Voitus of the police department captured the two occupants alleged to have been in the car with Christian. He testified to seeing the car drive through the yards and down Jacobs Road at a high rate of speed.
Christian, in 2008, went on trial on charges of ramming a stolen Cadillac into an unmarked Youngstown police car and assaulting police officers in a rolling gunbattle July 1, 2005.
A jury, after eight hours of deliberations in a weeklong trial, concluded that Christian was innocent of charges related to shooting at the officers, but jurors said they were “unable to decide” whether Christian was guilty of complicity regarding the three other men shooting assault rifles at the seven police officers.
Judge Evans at that time ordered Christian released from jail and ordered that there would be no retrial on the charges on which the jury could not decide.
The matter was taken to the appellate court, where judges ruled that Christian could be retried on the charges for which he was not found innocent.
There is no new court date set in the 2005 gunbattle case.