Stepfather: Death was no accident

By Ed Runyan | July 17, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

Mark

SHARON

The stepfather of Mark Goodrich Jr., 12, who drowned in the Shenango River last week near an abandoned railroad bridge, said the boy’s death “wasn’t no accident.”

“The two other boys had been trying to get him to jump off of the bridge for the longest time, and he didn’t want to,” Orlando Brooks said Monday at the home of Mark’s mother, Sheila May Goodrich.

Brooks said the Goodrich family has heard that two boys who were at the river with Mark have said that a 13-year-old pushed Mark off a railroad trestle into the river, jumped on him and held him under the water. Mark also was beaten, Brooks said.

Sharon Police Chief Mike Menster, meanwhile, says the autopsy results he received Sunday from Dr. Eric Vey, Erie County, Pa., forensic pathologist, indicated that Mark died of drowning — and revealed no signs of an assault.

The boy’s body was recovered from the river at 8:30 a.m. Saturday. He had been missing for nearly two days.

The family thinks Mark was beaten, but the damage found on the body was from “being in the water that long,” Menster said.

Brookfield Police Chief Dan Faustino said police are not sure whether Mark was among several boys seen in a Duferco Steel surveillance video jumping into the river from the Ohio side of the river into the water. The video doesn’t show the boys getting out of the river, Faustino said.

Menster said the Mercer County coroner’s office will not rule on whether the drowning was accidental or not until the Sharon Police Department completes its investigation.

“We’re still trying to interview and re-interview anyone with information in the case,” Menster said. “Until we do that, we’re not going to rule out anything.”

Menster said motion- activated video footage of the area of the river involved shows boys in the river but “no indication of violence.”

Duferco workers who were fairly close by the bridge said they likewise saw boys but didn’t see any violence among the them, Menster said.

When asked whether the Sharon Police Department has interviewed two other boys involved, Menster said, “Nobody has come forward to indicate they are the two boys.”

Menster said a “young man has been interviewed [in relation to the drowning] two times by police and may be interviewed again today.”

Menster said investigators will not conclude the case “until we’ve interviewed everyone with first-hand knowledge.”

Brooks said his stepson, who would have been a seventh-grader at Sharon Middle High School this fall, never had gone swimming at that location in the past. The bridge is about 20 feet above the river, Brooks said.

Menster said a 15-year-old drowned in that same part of the river about two years ago, and police have warned people that swimming in the river is dangerous.

For one thing, the river’s bottom is “irregular,” with depths ranging from 4 feet to 15 feet, Menster said. The water also “swirls,” and there is debris in the river, he said.

Mark enjoyed riding his bicycle, playing with his friends, playing video games and going to his aunt’s house, Brooks said.