Youngstown man keeps kids between self, cops

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Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Police say a Cranbrook Court man kept his two children between himself and officers as they tried to coax him out of a house while answering a domestic-violence call early Thursday.

George Barnette, 30, was taken to the Mahoning County jail on charges of domestic violence and obstruction of official business.

Reports said police were called to the 2600 block of Cranbrook on the West Side for a fight shortly after midnight. When they arrived, a woman told them she had been arguing with Barnette about something that happened earlier in the day when he began hitting her.

The woman told police Barnette shoved her against a wall, threw her to the floor and slammed her head repeatedly into the floor of the bathroom. When one of her children tried to intervene, Barnette also hit the child, reports said the woman told police.

Reports said Barnette would not come out of the home. When officers went to the door to try to speak to him, he placed his two young children between himself and the door and refused requests to go outside and to let the children go. Reports did not mention the ages of the children.

At one point, Barnette grabbed the children and slammed the door, shouting he would not go to jail. Officers surrounded the home, and as they did, they spotted him trying to get out a back window. When Barnette saw an officer, he went back inside, reports said.

Eventually, family members and an officer talked to Barnette for several minutes before he gave himself up and allowed himself to be arrested, reports said. The children were not harmed.