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Man found guilty of fleeing police
YOUNGSTOWN
Duniek Christian has been found guilty of fleeing from police in a 2010 pursuit.
Christian, 27, of Youngs-town was found guilty of felony failure to comply with the order or signal of a police officer. The all female jury in the court of Judge James C. Evans of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court reached the decision Wednesday afternoon after a one-day trial.
Christian will be sentenced at a later date. He could be sentenced to up to five years in prison. Christian has already been in the county jail 600 days awaiting trial.
Police said they were trying to serve felony arrest warrants on 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. All three men were captured shortly after the chase ended.
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 gun battle July 1, 2005.
A jury, after eight hours of deliberations in a week-long 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.