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Woman gets time served, probation in endangering case
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A woman who was charged with child endangering after a toddler she was watching got a burn on her arm was sentenced to time served in the Mahoning County jail.
Judge Lou D’Apolito also sentenced Ronisha Harris, 28, to one year’s probation Thursday in common pleas court after she entered a guilty plea to a charge of child endangering.
Harris has been in the county jail since she was indicted on the third-degree felony charge in January. She was charged after a girl just under 2 received a burn on her wrist. Harris was watching the child for a friend who was in jail.
Assistant Prosecutor Jennifer McLaughlin said investigators have no evidence Harris inflicted the burn on the child, but she was charged because she never took the child to be treated for her injury.
The burn was discovered by the child’s great-grandmother, who in turn took the child to the burn unit at Akron Children’s Hospital.
The burn occurred sometime in August or September of 2015, McLaughlin said. The child will have no lasting effects other than a scar.
Harris told the judge she didn’t seek medical treatment for the child because she was afraid she’d be blamed for the child’s injury.
Harris said she was making lunch for the child when she heard a noise in another room where she left an iron plugged in, and when she went in the room, she discovered the child had just been burned.
Harris said she has no children of her own.
Judge D’Apolito said he does not believe Harris meant to harm the child, and he could understand that someone who has never had children would not know how to keep them away from objects that may harm them.
But he said the fact she spent time in jail was necessary because a message has to be sent that treatment has to be sought when a child is injured because of young children’s vulnerability.