Triple murder suspect who 'killed girl, 10, and her grandparents' jumps off balcony in court 'suicide'

A man about to stand trial for killing a 10-year-old girl and her grandparents has thrown himself off a balcony at the courthouse.

Robert Seman, 48, from Ohio was leaving court after a status hearing before his trial when surveillance footage shows that he jumped off a fourth-floor balcony and fell to the rotunda floor below.

Seman was accused of sexually abusing the girl before killing the family by setting fire to their home in March 2015. Prosecutors believe he allegedly set fire to the house because the girl was to testify against him in a rape case.

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Corinne Gump and her grandparents, Bill and Judy Schmidt, were killed in the incident. If convicted, Seman could have been facing the death penalty.

“We watched the video, and it’s an apparent suicide,” Mahoning County Sheriff Jerry Greene said of Seman’s balcony plunge. “There was no scuffle or anything.”

Seman had been walking without handcuffs on, flanked by two deputies on his way to a holding cell.

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Meanwhile, assistant prosecutor Dawn Cantalamessa believes that his actions are confirmation of his guilt.

“I think it’s very telling,” she said. “He knew the evidence against him. Every witness we talked to in preparation for the case, they didn’t know why he wasn’t pleading guilty or asking for some sort of plea, so this is very telling.”