A Youngwood mother seeking to have her criminal charges dismissed has blamed her teenage daughter for the brutal attack of her grandmother as they watched a Pittsburgh Steelers preseason game on TV two years ago.
In court documents filed this week, the lawyer for Delores Amorino, 42, said his client’s now 19-year-old daughter Sarah Amorino was the person responsible for the physical assaults of the 78-year-old woman, who prosecutors contend was held captive for more than two days when she was punched, kicked, beaten with a broom, doused with chemicals and had her head shaved.
Defense attorney Tim Dawson said Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court Judge Tim Krieger should dismiss the criminal charges against Amorino based on pretrial testimony of witnesses and his own observations during previous court hearings.
“It is quite reasonable for this court to conclude that Delores indeed stood by “out of it” and “in another world” while Sarah perpetrated these crimes against her grandmother. This defendant had no legal obligation to stop Sarah from her own criminal actions, as the prosecution implies. A moral obligation, perhaps, but no legal obligation that would establish any sort of culpability …,” Dawson wrote.
Prosecutors last month submitted legal arguments in which they said the criminal charges, including aggravated assault and conspiracy, should stand against Delores Amorino because she was an accomplice to her daughter’s actions and actively participated in some of the alleged assaults.
Both mother and daughter lived together with Delores Amorino’s mother in August 2017 when they argued over the volume of a Steelers game broadcast. The two younger women watched the game on television and the older woman went into her bedroom to listen on the radio. The two younger women became enraged over the volume of the radio, police said.
According to court records, mother and daughter broke down the door and began physically abusing the older woman, striking her with a broom handle, stomping on her foot, choking her with bare hands and a scarf, shaving her head with scissors and a shaver and dumping chemicals on her head and body, according to court records.
The alleged victim escaped days later as the women slept and walked a half-mile to the borough building to seek help, police said.
Krieger ruled in May that Delores Amorino was competent to stand trial while her daughter was sent back to a mental hospital for additional treatment. Both women were diagnosed with a mental illness in which a psychiatrist said they suffer from delusions that they were in romantic relationships with current and former Steelers’ players.
