Man acquitted of child endangering

By Peter H. MILLIKEN

milliken@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

A jury has acquitted an Austintown man of child-endangering charges but was unable to reach a verdict concerning his wife on the same charges.

After deliberating for eight hours, the jury of seven men and five women acquitted David Lucas on Thursday, but deadlocked concerning his wife, Cherron. Both are 26.

The Lucases were charged in connection with a skull-fracture suffered by their 6-week-old son, who has made a full recovery.

Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, who presided over the four-day trial, declared a mistrial due to a hung jury in the case of Cherron Lucas.

Prosecuting and defense lawyers declined to comment after the jury concluded its deliberations.

The Lucases told authorities the boy fell to the floor from a 29-inch-high kitchen table top while he was strapped in a baby seat April 6, 2011, in their Idaho Road residence.

“A fall of that type — a household fall of 29 inches — wouldn’t cause the type of serious fracture that the child exhibited,” Nicholas Brevetta, an assistant county prosecutor, told the jurors in his closing argument Wednesday.

The boy couldn’t have pulled the chair off the table while strapped into it, Brevetta said.

Brevetta cited testimony from Dr. Paul MacPherson, a pediatrician, who was formerly with the Tri-County Child Advocacy Center, who said the fracture was consistent with the type of injury that would be expected in a two-story fall or an auto accident.

However, defense lawyers Michael Kivlighan and Thomas Zena said Dr. MacPherson never attributed the boy’s injury to child abuse.

Zena said the doctor did not rule out the possibility of the fracture’s having occurred in the manner the Lucases described.

“This was a terrible, terrible accident and an unfortunate injury, but just because an injury occurs to this child doesn’t mean that a separate criminal act took place,” Kivlighan said.

“I can’t tell you how it happened. ... I can tell you that their explanation is impossible,” Brevetta said of the Lucases.