Father indicted in infant son’s death

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Tyler A. Graham called in the bomb threat July 12 to the Mahoning County Common Pleas courthouse, deputy sheriffs said Thursday.

Graham, 31, of Ansley Street, Alliance, was indicted Thursday on seven felony counts including making terroristic threats, extortion, telecommunications harassment, disrupting public services and inducing panic.

Graham called in the threat to get out of his sentencing hearing set for that day on a separate case involving charges of felonious assault, among others, authorities said.

He was sentenced the following Monday to three years in prison on those charges and remains in the Mahoning County jail.

He was served with the new charges today, Sheriff Jerry Greene said.

“When we initially interviewed with him, he made an attempt to pin this on his brother, which we feel is very shameful,” he said.

Greene on July 12 said an unidentified caller – now alleged to be Graham – told county officials four explosive devices were planted around the county courthouse and possibly another courthouse, causing that courthouse, the federal courthouse across the street and the city municipal court to be evacuated and swept by bomb removal crews.

Investigators traced the calls back to Alliance, then cross-referenced court dockets set for July 12. Only Graham’s case, which was set for sentencing, was out of Alliance, he said.

“It’s been really good detective work,” Greene said.

The grand jury Thursday also indicted the husband of a woman who died of stab wounds at a Coitsville hotel in June.

Francis Rydarowicz, 48, is charged with aggravated murder, murder, felonious assault and domestic violence for the June 19 stabbing death of Katherine Rydarowicz, 41.

She was found dead at the Kings Hotel on U.S. Route 422 from stab wounds.

Rydarowicz also had stab wounds, reports said.

The couple were married but going through a divorce, police said.

The father of a 6-week-old baby that died in March was indicted on a murder charge for the child’s death.

Xavier Richardson, 19, was indicted for the death of Xavier Richardson Jr., who died at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital after Richardson took the baby there after he stopped breathing in their Wick Avenue home.

At the time, hospital personnel told police the baby’s injuries were consistent with abuse and Richardson was arrested and booked into the county jail.

In April, city prosecutors dismissed the charges because the coroner’s report in the case was not yet completed and they wanted to make sure the report could be available for the grand jury to review. This week the county coroner’s office ruled the baby’s death a homicide from blunt force injuries to the head.

Richardson has yet to be taken back into custody.

Also indicted was Nicholas Yukon, 29, who faces 50 counts of pandering obscenity and two counts of tampering with evidence. The charges are a result of a July 17 search warrant served at a South Hazlewood Avenue home by the Mahoning Valley Human Trafficking Force as part of an investigation into child pornography.

Investigators seized computers and phones as part of the investigation. Yukon has been in the county jail since the warrant was served.