BOARDMAN — A man is facing multiple charges, including felony counts, after allegedly causing a car crash on purpose Wednesday.

A Boardman police report states that Cornell Barnes Sr., 39, of Boardman, is accused of reaching over from the passenger’s seat and pulling the wheel toward oncoming traffic during an argument with his child’s mother, while the child was in the vehicle. The crash, which involved another vehicle, resulted in minor injuries.

The crash happened about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday on South Avenue, near Simon Road, close to Barnes’ home.

Barnes was scheduled for a late afternoon Thursday appearance in Mahoning County Boardman Court, where he is charged with three counts of felonious assault, second-degree felonies; two counts of domestic violence, first-degree misdemeanors; two counts of threatening domestic violence, fourth-degree misdemeanors; and endangering children, a first-degree misdemeanor.

When police arrived, the driver of the other vehicle told them that an adult male in dark clothing had fled from the scene. The report states the driver of Barnes’s vehicle, the mother of his child, told police he likely fled to his house, about three football fields from the crash scene. She told police they were arguing about the child, and Barnes told her that if she did not “listen to him and stop talking,” he would pull the wheel into oncoming traffic “and hurt us all.”

The report states that the child, who was in the back seat, sustained a small cut above his eye. Either the child or another person in the car also told police that Barnes intentionally reached over and pulled the steering wheel, forcing the car into the opposite travel lane and causing the crash. The driver told police she wanted to file charges against him.

Both a corroborating witness and the driver of the other vehicle said Barnes’s car suddenly swerved right before the crash. The driver of the other vehicle, informed that Barnes may have caused it on purpose, said she also would like to press charges.

The report states that when police located Barnes, walking along South Avenue near his apartment, he initially denied knowing anything about the crash. Then he admitted that he was in the car and having a conversation with his child’s mother, and that the crash must have been the result of her being distracted. He also allegedly suggested that the other driver could have been at fault.

These charges are not Barnes’s first run-ins with the county’s legal system. Court records show that in April 2025, charges of aggravated felony menacing (a fourth-degree felony) and refusal to test for OVI (a first-degree misdemeanor) were bound over from Mahoning County Canfield Court to Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, as were charges from March 2025 for receiving stolen property (a fourth-degree felony), vandalism (fifth-degree felony) and improper handling of a firearm in a vehicle (fifth-degree felony).

The charges, which Barnes faces in the court of Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge John Durkin, indicate that the receiving stolen property charge was replaced with an indictment for aggravated drug possession (a fourth-degree felony), and the vandalism charge was replaced with cocaine possession (a fourth-degree felony). The refusal charge was replaced with an indictment for OVI.

Dating back to 2007, Barnes also has guilty pleas on record in Austintown for receiving stolen property and resisting arrest, petty theft and drug possession in Boardman in 2010, and assault in Boardman in 2018.

In May 2025, charges of domestic violence and threatening domestic violence against Barnes were dismissed.