31-year-old Wilbur McCarty has been granted a pre-trial release in a Dover child abuse case after he serves a 30-day sentence in Stark County for his second drunk driving conviction. (Tusco TV) 

Release granted for man accused of assaulting infant  

NEW PHILADELPHIA (Tusco TV) - The man accused of assaulting his girlfriend’s son while watching him at their apartment in Dover will be getting out of jail ahead of his trial but not until he serves his punishment for a drunk driving conviction out of Massillon.  

31-year-old Wilbur McCarty will have to complete a 30-day jail stay in Stark County before he’s released to live with his grandmother in Van Wert, Ohio on a GPS ankle bracelet and alcohol monitor. Tuscarawas County Common Pleas Court Judge Edward O’Farrell set the release terms at McCarty’s bond hearing Friday, denying the state’s motion to have him held without bail for felonious assault and endangering children. 

"I find there are conditions of your release that will protect the alleged victim of your alleged criminal conduct, the one-year-old, and will protect other children and other people in the community." 

Assistant Prosecutor Mike Ernest filed the no-bond request, arguing that McCarty’s arrest while awaiting sentencing in the Massillon case shows he can’t be trusted.

"He had a DUI that was unresolved in Massillon Municipal Court. He was under some type of bond conditions at that time and clearly, those meant nothing to him." 

The child’s mother brought him to Cleveland Clinic Union Hospital around 5 am December 1st. He was transferred to Akron Children’s where doctors found bleeding in his brain, a broken blood vessel in his eye and a concussion. She told Captain Chad Mowrer she and McCarty had been bickering throughout the day about his drinking. She reported coming home and seeing McCarty hit baby but said she didn't go to the hospital right away she  because she was afraid he would hurt them. 

McCarty denied harming the child but admitted to drinking the day he was injured. Mowrer said McCarty smelled like alcohol the next day when he interviewed him. McCarty claimed he didn't know what happened and that the infant possibly fell off the couch.

McCarty's Defense Attorney Richard Drake said McCarty had lived with the victim's mother for around a month and regularly cared for him and his 6-year-old brother. He characterized McCarty as a good father to his own two children, who live with their mother.

"The only proof that he did anything wrong, if you want to call it that, is her statement. It’s when she walked in the door, it just happened to be at that time that Wilbur, a right-handed person used his left hand to hit the child." 

McCarty will have to remain in his grandmother’s home nightly from 7 pm to 7 am while he’s on supervision. He’s also prohibited from traveling into Tuscarawas County and Caroll counties. His trial date will be in around four months.
 

TUSCO TV