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.