11-year-old: ‘He killed my mother’

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Curtis Young and his ex-girlfriend Helen Moore had an ‘abusive and tumultuous’ relationship.

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — Mary Moore said she couldn’t understand why her sister, Helen Moore, would slowly be turning left near Curtis Young’s North Center Street residence, where there was no intersecting street to turn onto; then she noticed that her sister’s car had left the road and turned onto its side.

“I started screaming and telling 911 what I saw” by cellular phone, Mary Moore testified Monday in Young’s capital murder trial.

She testified she screamed at Young, who was standing outside his residence: “What did you do?”

Then she heard her niece, Ashley Moore, screaming from the back seat of the overturned car: “He killed my mother. He killed my mother.”

Mary Moore and others helped Ashley, then 11, and Ashley’s 5-year-old sister, Maia, out of the back seat, but firefighters later extricated Helen Moore and her 8-year-old son, Ceonei, from the car’s front seat.

Young, 26, is charged with aggravated murder with firearm and death-penalty specifications in the July 31, 2007, deaths of his ex-girlfriend, Helen Moore, 29, and her nearly full-term unborn child, both having perished at the scene, and of Ceonei, who was pronounced dead the next morning in St. Elizabeth Health Center.

A nine-woman, three-man jury is hearing the case, over which Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court is presiding.

Earlier in the day, Ashley had testified she saw Young briefly enter and emerge from his residence carrying a gun and that she heard a single shot before the car her mother was driving left the road.

Police said they believed the same bullet that passed through Helen Moore’s neck lodged in Ceonei’s head, where it was recovered during his autopsy.

In his opening statement, Martin P. Desmond, assistant county prosecutor, said the slayings were purposeful.

But defense lawyer Douglas B. Taylor said Young fired in self-defense, fearing he would be hit and run over by Helen Moore’s car.

Mary Moore and her son, Garrison, then 14, who was with her in her car, had been in constant contact with a 911 dispatcher during a rolling argument. The audio from the 911 call, during which the dispatcher tries to direct the Moores to the police station, is to be played for the jury when testimony resumes at 9 a.m. today.

The pursuit started at Helen Moore’s Cassius Street home, with Helen Moore and her children, Mary Moore and her children, and Young, all in separate cars; and it ended on Center Street near the house Young shared with his girlfriend, Charzetta Scott.

The confrontation began when Young drove up to Helen Moore’s residence, argued with her and threatened to kill her, Mary Moore testified.

Mary Moore said she opened the trunk of her car at that location to get her crowbar. “He balled up his fists and bit his lip,” she said of Young, adding that she got between Young and Helen Moore and grabbed Young’s wrist before the three cars left the scene.

Mary Moore and Garrison Moore testified they heard Young tell someone he was talking to on his cellular phone to get his gun while the three cars were at McGuffey Mall on Garland Avenue.

Garrison said Mary and Helen Moore tried to box Young’s car in at a convenience store and later at the mall in an effort to hold him so police could arrest him, but Young got away.

Judge Sweeney read to the jurors a statement agreed to by the prosecution and defense, which said Young and Helen Moore had a verbally and physically “abusive and tumultuous” on-and-off, six-year relationship that included “domestic violence by and between both parties.”

After arriving at Young’s residence, Ashley testified that Helen Moore’s car did not move until after Young fired the shot.

Under cross-examination by Taylor, Ashley said she didn’t recall telling police two hours after the shooting that her mother tried to run over Young with her car.

Taylor then played the video of the interview in which Ashley made that statement.

But in re-direct examination by Robert J. Andrews, assistant county prosecutor, Ashley said Young was alongside the driver’s side, not in front of Moore’s car when he fired.

Garrison testified he told Ashley by cellular phone during the pursuit to urge her mother to stop because police were en route. He said he wanted Helen Moore to stop because he “knew something was going to happen” if she went to the residence Young and Scott shared.

milliken@vindy.com