Chesterton Tribune

 

 

Jury finds Liberty Township man not guilty of child molesting

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A Liberty Township man charged with child molesting was found not guilty on all counts following a two-day trial last week in Porter Superior Court.

A jury deliberated nearly seven hours on Thursday, to find David Lazaro, 39, not guilty of three counts of child molesting, his attorney, Susan Severtson, told the Chesterton Tribune today.

Lazaro was charged in 2015, following an investigation which began in 2012, when a girl--now 17--accused him of showing her “the bad touch.” The girl stated that the incidents began in 2007 in a residence in Lake Station, continued over the next five years, and also occurred at a residence in Chesterton.

Each of the three counts against Lazaro carried a maximum term of eight years.

Severtson, however, made the case to the jury that the girl’s accusations were at once “impossible and implausible.”

Impossible, Severtson told the Tribune, because the molestation would had to have occurred in “tiny residences with so many people living in them”; and implausible because as time passed the girl’s accusations against her client became “increasingly dramatic,” including new accusations that Lazaro had threatened both her and her mother with physical violence.

“It was physically impossible that the molesting could ever have happened and after four years her accusations all of a sudden changed dramatically,” Severtson said.

“We appreciate the hard work of the jury, its consideration, and the result,” she added.

 

Posted 11/1/2016

 
 
 
 

 

 

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