YOUNGSTOWN — Kevin Day, assistant Mahoning County prosecutor, told jurors Tuesday that George Hill III told Boardman police that his girlfriend, Jennifer L. Mullen, 35, hit her head in the bathroom of their Shields Road home May 30, 2020, after having six or seven drinks.

Hill, 46, who lived with Mullen and her two young daughters, called 911 at 6:38 a.m. the next day, saying he could not wake her, and she had a dark substance coming out of her mouth. When police got there, they saw Mullen in bed, with blood on the bed, on a towel and in the bathroom.

“He says she goes and lays down and hours pass,” Day said during opening statements in Hill’s murder trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Hill is charged with murder, felonious assault and domestic violence.

“When he was asked why he didn’t call 911, the evidence will show that he said, ‘Well, I couldn’t call from my phone. I had to charge hers. I had to wait.’ And he also says he didn’t even call 911. He calls a friend of hers,” Day said.

Mullen was taken to the hospital early May 31 and died the next day. She had a variety of injuries — “bruises all over her body,” a skull fracture that led to her death, a 2-inch cut on her head and a cut on her side, Day said.

Hill made three videos that night — two before midnight and one at just after midnight, Day said.

“Evidence you are going to see from (the third) video shows that at that point it was entirely clear that Jennifer Mullen had hit her head and she is bleeding,” Day said. “The defendant himself says, ‘You’re bleeding all over the place,'” Day said.

Testing done on Mullen’s blood and urine will show there was no alcohol in her system, Day said. A forensic pathologist will testify the blood from her head injury is “like a capture of time” at the time the injury occurred, and it will show “the blood in her brain had the equivalent of less than one alcoholic beverage,” Day said.

Day said, “This was no accident,” and Hill caused the injuries.

THE DEFENSE

Attorney James Wise told jurors in his opening statement that Mullen had alcohol in her system, and a defense witness will “dispute that there is a freezing of time or a freezing of the blood alcohol level at the time of the fall and at the time of the bleeding.”

The first witness in the trial was the oldest of Mullen’s two daughters, 15, who was not home the night her mother suffered her fatal injury, but was asked numerous questions about the relationship between her mother and Hill.

She said her mother and Hill fought “almost every night,” and that the fights were physical and verbal.

“Most of the time, he would push her around, pull her hair sometimes, sometimes he would hit her,” she said.

The fighting made her scared for her mother’s safety, she said. He would hit her on her arm or leg, and “one time he pushed her into the wall in our bedroom,” she said of she and her sister. Because her mother had bruising on her arms and legs, she would sometimes wear garments that would cover those areas, the girl said. She did not tell anyone about the injuries out of fear, she said.

Under cross examination by Wise, the teen agreed her mother fell at times when she drank alcohol and they argued about her mother’s drinking. She agreed Hill also drank and was “angry” sometimes when he drank with her mother.

She remembered a time when her mother came into the girls’ bedroom and Hill walked behind her and “punched” the door open. Her mother “ran to me” and seemed scared, the girl said.

The girl said one time she heard her mother telling Hill, while she and Hill were outside in the driveway, that her mother had two concussions that Hill caused.

The trial resumes today.