Staff photos / Ed Runyan Christopher Hill and Maleka Curry talk during a break in their child endangering and felonious assault trial Monday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

YOUNGSTOWN — Maleka D. Curry, 35, and Christopher L. Hill, 43, both of Bissell Avenue in Youngstown, went on trial Monday on charges of felonious assault and felony child endangering for a May 9 incident involving a boy, 13.

Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge John Durkin is hearing the case without a jury at the defendants’ request. Curry was secretly indicted in October on three counts of child endangering and one count of felonious assault, and Hill was indicted on two counts of child endangering and one count of felonious assault.

Youngstown and Boardman police officers testified Monday, as well as a nurse at East Middle School, who examined the boy May 10 at the school and treated wounds on the boy’s arms that she said looked like they came from “whips.”

She later testified that she has seen many children in her job who had wounds over the years, but this boy’s wounds were “the worst I’ve ever seen.” The boy was referred to her by the school principal May 10. The boy told her he got the wounds from being punished for running away by his mother’s boyfriend. She contacted Youngstown police and Mahoning County Children Services, which resulted in the boy being taken to the hospital.

The boy also testified, saying he was 13 at the time he suffered the injuries. He went to the Southern Park Mall with a friend to “play games,” but was taken into custody by Boardman police and taken home.

He left home and was taken into custody later that night by Youngstown police. But he was only there a short time before he went out a second-story window onto a small roof and stayed there, he said. Hill told him he had to “get off of the roof and come in the house,” he said.

Then Hill “pulled me in the window,” he said. Hill then “gave me a whuppin’,” he said. The boy said he thought he got hit with a belt, but he wasn’t sure what the object was but the strikes “hurt a lot” that night. “My back was hurting, my arms was hurting, my legs was hurting,” he said. It stung and hurt, he agreed when asked by Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Daniel Yozwiak. He said his mother was in her room at the time this happened. He was “not for sure” whether his mother told Hill to hit him, he said.

When Yozwiak asked if his mother had ever told Hill to hit him in the past, the boy said, “I think so.” Hill had hit him with a belt once in the past, the boy said.

The pain was gone the next day, and he went to school and wore a short-sleeved shirt. The principal asked him why he had not been in school recently and asked him where he got the bruises on his arm. He told the principal he had gotten the bruises while playing in the woods, but he told Yozwiak that was not true.

He pointed out his mother and Hill in the courtroom, both sitting at the defense table with their respective attorneys. Yozwiak asked the smallish boy if he would lift up the back of his shirt and show Durkin his back, apparently to show him his injuries, which the boy did.

Jim Wise, Hill’s attorney, cross examined the boy extensively about the many times he had run away from home, including the night he was found at the mall and taken back home. The boy agreed he had not done well in school and had gotten suspended from school for fighting. He agreed he had run away from home “lots of times.”

When asked if he had listened to the police officers who put him in a police cruiser at the mall, he agreed that he did not listen to them.

Wise asked the boy whether he told Youngstown police on May 9, 2024, when they took him home whether he told them he did not “want to be be here,” the boy said he did not remember.

“You didn’t care about school?” Wise asked.

“Not really,” the boy said. “All you cared about was running around, getting what you wanted,” Wise asked.

“Yes,” the boy agreed.

Earlier testimony came from a Boardman officer who went to the Southern Park Mall about 7:43 p.m. May 9 because of the boy, who was described as a runaway without a parent. The officer located the boy and took him to his mom’s house in Youngstown, but not willingly.

Later that night, Youngstown police were called to Springdale Avenue on the East Side, where they took the boy from a security guard who was “holding” him there for Youngstown police. He did not go back home willingly and damaged the cruiser, the officer testified.

When they took the boy home, there was a man there “correcting” the boy and his mother was saying the boy was just going to “run away,” Youngstown police officer Jay Fletcher testified. Officers learned that after the boy went into the house, he went through a window onto a roof in the back of the house, the officer testified. The boy would not come in the house, but a decision was made for the officers to leave, thinking that might bring him back in, Fletcher said.

The trial resumes today.