Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Staff report
WARREN
A Trumbull County grand jury has indicted a West Farmington man on aggravated murder — a charge that could result in a life prison sentence without parole.
Tuesday’s superseding indictment adds aggravated murder to the other charges Thomas Starr, 28, of Greenville Road, faced earlier — murder, attempted murder and felonious assault.
One of the circumstances that can increase a charge from murder to aggravated murder is the existence of “prior calculation and design,” according to Ohio law.
Chris Becker, an assistant county prosecutor, said prosecutors asked the grand jury to add aggravated murder based on unspecified additional information uncovered.
Trumbull County 911 reported that Starr told them June 22 he “just attempted to kill my mother and stepfather” at their home on state Route 305 in Southington near U.S. Route 422.
Starr talked to a dispatcher at length, helping police find him in the woods near his mother’s home.
Police found Jeffrey L. Westfall, 53, dead on the front porch of a stab wound to the neck and found his mother, Lisa Frye, 46, alive in the road near her house but badly injured from a knife wound to the neck. Frye survived.
Police said Westfall and Frye were not married.
Aggravated murder carries a possible penalty of life in prison with a possibility of parole after 20, 25 or 30 years; or life in prison without the possibility of parole. Murder — the most serious charge Starr faced before — carries a possible penalty of 15 years to life.
The grand jury also indicted William F. Crenshaw, 28, of Dover Street Southwest in Warren Township on felonious assault and being a felon in possession of a firearm, charges that could carry a possible prison sentence of about 10 years.
Police said Crenshaw was shot in the biceps May 19 on Fourth Street Southwest, and a 47-year-old woman was shot in the lower extremities in the incident.