Staff photo / Ed Runyan Marquaysha A. Driver, 31, right, confers with her legal team during a break in jury selection Tuesday in Driver’s involuntary manslaughter trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. At far left is one of her attorneys, Frank Cassese.

YOUNGSTOWN — A jury was seated Tuesday in the involuntary manslaughter trial of Marquaysha A. Driver, 31, in the accidental shooting death of her 7-year-old son, De’Vonte J. Housley Jr., in October 2023.

Opening statements and first witnesses will be heard this morning in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. Driver is charged with involuntary manslaughter and felony child endangering in De’Vonte’s death and two counts of misdemeanor child endangering involving two other children.

The boy died in the emergency room at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital of a gunshot wound early Oct. 22, 2023, according to the Mahoning County Coroner’s Office. First responders were called to Driver’s home on Marmion Avenue at 8:02 a.m. for a report of a gunshot victim and found the boy on a bedroom floor, according to a coroner’s report.

The boy’s obituary stated that he “possessed a radiant smile that could light up the darkest room and his infectious laughter was a source of unending joy for those around him.” He was a second grader at Youngstown Community School and had four siblings.

Carla Molina, the boy’s grandmother, told The Vindicator that prior to her grandson being released into the custody of his mother in 2021, he had spent the first six years of his life being raised in her care.

“He had manners, he was respectable and lovable because that’s what I instilled in him,” Molina said. “I taught him to walk, how to talk; I taught him to remember his address and his phone number. That was my baby.”

Judge Anthony D’Apolito is presiding over the trial.