Jury selection in the case of a Tyrone man accused of murdering a 6-year-old boy was to begin today in Hollidaysburg. This marks the beginning of the trial for Nathan Shaw who was charged last January with the brutal knife slaying of young Jared Klein and the assault of Jared\u2019s mother.
\nLast March, during his formal arraignment, Shaw pleaded not guilty before Blair County Judge Daniel Milliron to charges of criminal homicide, rape, aggravated assault and other serious felony offenses connected to the 2005 night-after-Christmas death of young Klein and the assault and rape of his mother.
\n\u201cWe will seek the death penalty in this case,\u201d said Blair County District Attorney Richard Consiglio following Shaw\u2019s formal arraignment.
\n\u201cWe feel very confident about the evidence and, at this time, we don\u2019t really see any complications.\u201d
\nShaw is accused of brutally beating Jared\u2019s mother, binding her and raping her, then beating and murdering Jared with a knife Dec. 26, 2005. Tyrone Borough Police responded to a \u201cweapons call\u201d about 10 p.m. that night, only to find young Jared lying dead with a knife protruding from the left side of his neck, in the living room of his family\u2019s two-story Tyrone apartment, and his mother next door, badly injured. Shaw was immediately pursued to answer questions about the incident, which lead law enforcement officers on a cross-country manhunt, ending in Oklahoma.
\nShaw was tracked down, driving the mother\u2019s stolen Nissan Sentra, by Kay County, Okla., authorities. A seven-mile high-speed chase, reaching speeds in excess of 100 mph, ended in a fiery crash and Shaw\u2019s arrest. He was later extradited to Blair County to face the charges levied against him.
\n\u201cThe prosecution has given notice of three aggravating circumstances which have compelled them to seek the death penalty in the case,\u201d said lead defense attorney, Blair County public defender Theodore Krol.
\nConsiglio, who was the last attorney to successfully prosecute a death penalty case in Blair County, explained the reasoning behind deciding to seek an execution for Shaw.
\n\u201cIn Pennsylvania, in order to ask for the death penalty in a first degree murder case, there must be at least one of a list of 18 aggravating circumstances, which we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt,\u201d Consiglio said. \u201cIn this case, there are three: The first being the fact that the victim is a child under the age of 12.
\n\u201cThe second is the evidence of torture during the attack on the child,\u201d the DA continued. \u201cThere is evidence that will prove the victim was beaten, strangled and then stabbed. The pathologist who performed the autopsy has testified that the stab wound to the victim\u2019s neck, while causing death, did not cause instant death.\u201d
\nAt Shaw\u2019s preliminary hearing, Dr. Gordon Handte of J.C. Blair Memorial Hospital, the pathologist who performed Klein\u2019s autopsy, said Klein died by bleeding from a severed jugular vein. The pathologist said the knife blade was buried \u201cfour inches deep\u201d in Klein\u2019s neck, with the tip embedded in the spinal column, nearly coming out the other side. Handte said it would\u2019ve taken a \u201csignificant amount of force\u201d to sink the knife that deep into the tissue of Klein\u2019s neck.
\nAlso, according to the autopsy report, Klein suffered \u201cmultiple additional injuries,\u201d including bruises to the face and neck, broken blood vessels in the face, abrasions to his right ear and a swollen brain. The expert witness said all of Klein\u2019s injuries were caused before death and likely caused the victim \u201csignificant pain,\u201d which constitutes the aggravating circumstance of torture.
\nThe third point, according to the district attorney, is that the murder happened during the commission of another felony offense (the rape of the mother, aggravated assault on both the mother and the child and the theft of her vehicle).
\nIt\u2019s up to the defense to introduce \u201cmitigating circumstances\u201d in an attempt to outweigh those aggravated circumstances presented by the prosecution. Defense attorneys need only prove those points by a preponderance of the evidence. It\u2019s uncertain as to whether the defense will present mitigating circumstances.
\nUltimately, it\u2019s up to the jury to decide whether death by execution is warranted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jury selection in the case of a Tyrone man accused of murdering a 6-year-old boy was to begin today in Hollidaysburg. This marks the beginning of the trial for Nathan Shaw who was charged last January with the brutal knife slaying of young Jared Klein and the assault of Jared\u2019s mother. Last March, during his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}