Man on trial after woman found dead in recycling bin
A blue recycling bin was rolled into a Franklin County courtroom this week and placed in front of jurors as a key piece of evidence in the murder trial of Andrew McGowan.
It served as a constant reminder of the callous way the prosecution says McGowan discarded Gabriel Hinojosa’s body.
McGowan, 30, is charged with murdering Hinojosa, his 22-yearold ex-girlfriend, placing her body in the recycling bin, wiring the bin shut and dumping it in Big Darby Creek in Pleasant Township.
Although holes were drilled in the bin in an apparent effort to fill it with water, and a car battery was inside to further weigh it down, it was only partially submerged in the shallow creek when three kayakers discovered it on Feb. 24, 2017.
McGowan was arrested a little more than a month later when a confidential informant provided investigators with tips that led them to a Franklinton autorepair garage co-owned by McGowan. A search of the business, in the 800 block of West Broad Street, turned up evidence presented to the jury by Assistant Prosecutors Kara Keating and Michael Hughes.
The evidence included tiny pieces of blue plastic, some in spiral shapes as though they had fallen from a drill bit, found on the floor of the garage and in the back of a conversion van in the parking lot. A crime-scene analyst with the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation testified that the recycling bin, the type issued to Columbus residents for curbside pickup, could fit in the back of the van.
McGowan and Hinojosa, both of the Hilltop, had a child together. He had threatened to kill Hinojosa if she ever tried to get full custody of the child, prosecutors have said in court filings.
An autopsy by a pathologist with the county coroner’s office ruled Hinojosa’s death a homicide, but classified the way in which she was killed as “undetermined.”
Such a ruling “doesn’t cut it,” defense attorney Nicholas Testa told the jury in his opening statement.
“There was no murder in this case,” he said, promising that the defense will present its own expert witnesses to show Hinojosa died of a drug overdose.
A toxicology expert will testify for the defense that among multiple drugs found in Hinojosa’s system, there was enough fentanyl to kill her, he said.
Testa suggested that the body could have been dumped by someone who supplied her with the drugs and didn’t want to be held responsible for her death.
But it was McGowan who appeared to be ducking investigators when an arrest warrant was issued, Keating told the jury. After promising to turn himself in, McGowan was arrested in Jackson County in southern Ohio, loading a duffel bag into a recreational vehicle.
The trial is expected to continue into next week in the Common Pleas courtroom of Judge Jenifer French.