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Warren woman’s bizarre death ruled accidental
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A young woman died Sunday evening at her home on Bonnie Brae Avenue Northeast in what a longtime Warren police officer says is one of the most bizarre deaths he has seen.
The Trumbull County Coroner’s office has ruled that Cierra Smith, 28, died from lack of oxygen after a window came down on her neck as she attempted to get into her house after locking herself out.
The death has been ruled an accident.
Police were called to the home at 6:48 p.m. for an unresponsive female “hanging out of a house window.”
Her boyfriend, Phillip Strock, 30, of the same address, had taken her down from the window and attempted to revive her, police said. Ambulance personnel also tried to revive her, but police said she may have been stuck for up to 30 minutes in the window before anyone found her. The 115-pound woman was pronounced dead.
Police called out Eric Laprocina, forensics officer, and a detective. A patrolman placed Strock in the back of a cruiser so that the detective, Nick Carney, could speak to him.
Capt. Rob Massucci, who is in charge of the detective division, said it’s a good thing two detectives were assigned to the case because of the unusual circumstances.
A neighbor saw Smith trying to get in the window, but no one saw her stuck in the window until Strock arrived, Massucci said.
Police reviewed text messages between Smith and Strock, checked into Smith’s relationships with other people and leaned on the scientific investigations by Laprocina and the coroner, Dr. Humphrey Germaniuk.
“Basically, I think we ran out all of our leads and came to this conclusion in a couple of days,” Massucci said.
One factor was that Smith and Strock had been locked out of the house before, and they had used the window before. They had left the window unlocked just for that reason, Massucci said.
The window was heavy and slid down more easily than one would expect. Smith was about 5-feet-3 and stood on a bucket to reach the window, which police say had been overturned.
There were marks on the siding below the window suggesting her legs had been thrashing, and “fingerprint swipes” from hands were found on the window, Laprocina said. Smith had the key to a deadbolt in her possession, but not a key to the door lock.
The neighbor asked Smith if everything was all right that evening, and Smith replied that everything was fine, Massucci said. Strock found her a half-hour later.
“I haven’t seen anything like this in a while,” Massucci said.