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Charges expected to be refiled in baby’s death
Law director says they will be refiled
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
City Law Director Jeff Limbian said Thursday he expects to refile charges of murder and felonious assault against a man accused of killing his infant son after those charges were dismissed in municipal court.
Limbian said the charges against Xavier Richardson, 19, of Wick Avenue, were dismissed because an autopsy on the March 15 death of the boy, who was less than 2 months old, has not yet been completed.
A charge of child endangering, however, was not dropped. Richardson and his attorney agreed to waive a preliminary hearing on that charge, and it was bound over to a Mahoning County grand jury.
Limbian said he did not want to bind the other two charges over without an autopsy report because he wants to make sure all evidence is available to be presented to the grand jury so that it will indict Richardson on those charges. He said he expects the charges to either be refiled in municipal court or presented to the grand jury once the report is completed.
Limbian said the case could be bound over without the report, but he said he wants to be cautious because the case involves the death of a very young child.
County Coroner Dr. David Kennedy said the case is just over 3 weeks old, and so far everything has been on schedule. He said a typical autopsy takes six to eight weeks, sometimes a bit longer in case a wide array of toxicology tests need to be performed.
Dr. Kennedy said in this case, investigators have sent out the bite marks for analysis, and because the victim is an infant, tests have to be more thorough to rule out any other causes of death.
Dr. Kennedy also said that he does not understand why the charges were dropped because in other homicide cases, those are usually presented to a grand jury before the autopsy report is completed.
“This was done in a timely manner,” Dr. Kennedy said. “I don’t understand it.”
In a police report, Richardson said he noticed the baby was sleeping but not breathing, so he took him to the hospital. The baby was cold to the touch and blue at the hospital, reports said.
Hospital personnel found bite marks on the baby and injuries to his brain, police said.
Richardson remains in the Mahoning County jail on $100,000 bond on the child-endangering charge.