Police: No foul play in boy’s drowning

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

SHARON

Three police departments concluded their investigation earlier this month into the July 14 drowning of Mark Good-rich Jr., 12, and found no criminal activity.

A press release from the Sharon Police Department says the investigation by the Sharon Police Department, Southwest Mercer County Regional Police Department, Brookfield Police Department, Mercer County Coroner’s Office and Mercer County District Attorney’s office “do not indicate any foul play or criminal activity in the tragic death of Mark Goodrich Jr.”

The Mercer County coroner’s office ruled the death accidental by drowning, said Dr. Charles Ziegler, deputy coroner.

Michael J. Menster, Sharon police chief, said investigators interviewed “dozens of people” who were swimming, boating, fishing or working along the river where the drowning occurred.

What they learned was that the boy was observed swimming at the popular swimming location in the Shenango River near Duferco Steel, but they received no information to substantiate statements by members of Goodrich’s family indicating that the boy had been pushed into the water and held under the water.

Brookfield Police Chief Dan Faustino agreed that investigators interviewed everyone they could in the case and that the interviews turned up nothing to indicate criminal activity.

“There is absolutely nowhere else to go at this time,” Faustino said of the investigation.

He added, however, that if information would be obtained later that would point in another direction, the case could be reopened.