Man gets year for threats to witnesses

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The father of an accused killer in Youngstown will spend the next 12 months in prison for threatening witnesses associated with his son’s case.

John Houser, 48, of Youngstown had been charged with felony retaliation and scheduled for trial Monday before Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Com-mon Pleas Court. Houser instead chose to accept a plea deal amending the retaliation charge to felony obstruction of justice.

Prosecutors and Atty. Ross Smith, representing Houser, agreed to a 12-month prison term on the amended charge. Judge Krichbaum adopted that agreement Monday morning.

John Houser is the father of Jamar Houser, who is the suspect in the murder of an elderly woman outside St. Dominic Church in early 2010. Jamar Houser also had been scheduled for trial this week, but newly discovered evidence in that case postponed the trial.

According to police, John Houser was at a gas station on Glenwood Avenue about 6 p.m. Feb. 6 when he saw a 22-year-old witness in the case against his son leaving the station.

Houser reportedly said to the man, “You know who I am? You know what it is. I’ll pull a cap back when I see you.”

The witness got into his car and left the gas-station parking lot, but Houser reportedly followed and tried to run the man off the road.

John Houser and his wife were charged with felony retaliation in February 2010 after police say they made oral threats in Youngstown to kill a witness in their son’s case. They were arrested by the Mahoning Valley Violent Crimes Task Force after police had their house under surveillance.

The couple ultimately pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of obstructing justice, and both were sentenced to five years’ probation.

John Houser, however, later violated that probation by driving a vehicle while under license-suspension and then was sentenced to 10 months in prison. The 12-month prison term he just received will run concurrent with the 10-month sentence he already is serving.

Jamar Houser is charged with aggravated murder and aggravated robbery with death-penalty specifications in the fatal shooting of Angeline Fimognari, 80, of Sheridan Road on the city’s South Side. The younger Houser, who also was charged with being a felon with a gun, remains jailed under a $3.1 million bond.

Fimognari was shot to death in the parking lot of St. Dominic Church on the city’s South Side after she left Mass there Jan. 23, 2010.