Explanation given in DNA swab case
WEST CHESTER >> An attorney representing a Coatesville man charged in a bizarre home invasion involving DNA swabs of two young borough children tried to explain the reasoning behind his client’s behavior at a bail hearing in Chester County Common Pleas Court.
Defense attorney Steven Jarmon of Malvern, representing 43-year-old Christopher Martin, told Judge Patrick Carmody that his client was going along with his wife’s determination to find out whether he was, in fact, the father of the two children involved.
“His wife wanted that done” Jarmon told the judge, trying to mitigate his client’s participation in the break-in and swabbing of the children’s cheeks. “She was the driver” of the action, convinced that Martin had cheated on her with the children’s mother several years ago, fathering them.
“The wife is the one that started this,” Jarmon said in court, referring to Michelle Martin, also 43, who has been charged along with her husband with criminal trespass, false imprisonment, and harassment. Michelle Martin is free on bail.
The explanation did not prove successful, however, in getting his client’s bail lowered. Carmody said that given the overall circumstances of the allegations in the complaint against him — and the recommendation from the Chester County Bail Agency that the $20,000 figure was reasonable — he would not agree to decrease it.
Martin has been unable to post the $2,000 necessary to win his release from Chester County Prison, where he has been held since his arrest last month, because he is “indigent,” Jarmon said.
Choking with emotion, Martin asked Carmody to lower his bail so he could support his family.
“I have five children out there,” he said, between the ages of 2 and 21. “I need to get out there and get to work.” He said the couple had been evicted from their home following their arrest, and that his wife is staying with a friend while his in-laws look after some of their children.
Assistant District Attorney Megan King of the D.A.’s Child Abuse Unit said that what concerns her office beyond the charges at issue is that the couple had previously been cited for harassing the man and woman involved in the current offenses, Andrew Shoffner and Rebecca Rendell Henry. They
were told not to contact the couple and to stay away from the North New Street property where the alleged break-in occurred.
“They were friends before,” King said. “That friendship had ended.” Jarmon confirmed the previous relationship, saying the children involved had even come to refer to his client as “Uncle Chris.”
Neither Shoffner nor Henry were in the courtroom at the time of the proceeding.
“There may be a whole story behind this that I am not familiar with,” Carmody said. “But it seems there’s a concern that you were warned before” to stay away.
The incident occurred at Shoffner’s home in the 700 block of North New Street, not far from the West Chester Golf and Country Club. In an arrest affidavit, a borough police investigator said that the Martin’s invaded the home and kept the two young children at bay, and that once inside, Michelle Martin allegedly swabbed the children’s mouths in what appears to be an attempt to get their DNA.
According to the affidavit, the incident occurred between 7 and 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 5 at the house Shoffner apparently shares with Rebecca Rendell Henry. The couple entered the home’s basement without Shoffner’s consent and once inside, Michelle Martin kept the two children — ages 7 and 5 — cornered in the basement before she used a cotton swab to dab the inside the boys’ mouths.
While Michelle Martin was doing this, Christopher Martin was allegedly at the top of the basement stairs locking the door so no one could interrupt. Michelle Martin told the two boys not to tell anyone they were at the house, which they had been ordered to stay away from in the earlier case, according to O’Hare.