Ruling in death
Ruling in death
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County Coroner’s Office has ruled the death of a 97-year-old man accidental after the car he was driving left Jacobs Road and hit a tower supporting overhead power lines Monday afternoon.
The coroner determined that Allen Robinson of Kenneth Street died of multiple blunt-force injuries to his chest and said there was no evidence that a cardiovascular event contributed to the crash.
Robinson’s wife and passenger, Mary, 94, remains in critical condition in St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital.
The car, which was northbound on Jacobs Road on the East Side about 1:30 p.m., left the right side of the road just before reaching the bridge spanning McKelvey Lake, but did not enter the lake, the coroner said.
Trial date changed
WARREN
The trial date for Royce Honaker, 63, of Southington has been moved back to April 13 while mental-health professionals evaluate him to determine whether he is not guilty by reason of insanity in the killing his wife, Donna, in 2013.
Honaker was sent to a state mental-hospital last year but returned to the Trumbull County Jail over the summer after he was deemed competent to stand trial. But his attorneys this week asked to have him evaluated for a third time to determine whether he was sane at the time of his wife’s death. The first two evaluations were conducted on behalf of the court and prosecutors. The forensic psychologist selected by the defense will need until April to complete his evaluation and report, attorneys said.
Leave of absence
GIRARD
Atty. Michael Bloom, prosecutor for Girard Municipal Court since March, is taking a military leave of absence from the job starting this week and will be replaced by Atty. Michael Scala effective Jan. 25. The court will use attorneys from a list of acting prosecutors to fill in two weeks until Atty. Scala begins, said Brian Kren, Girard law director. Bloom will be away from the job about four months while serving with the Judge Advocate General Corps of the Ohio National Guard, Kren said. The JAG Corps is the legal arm of the Guard.
The prosecutor of Girard Municipal Court handles cases for the city of Girard and townships of Liberty, Vienna and Hubbard. It pays about $34,000 per year.
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