Considering charges

Considering charges
YOUNGSTOWN -- Police and the city prosecutor's office are determining whether charges will be filed after police confiscated several suspected marijuana plants and equipment used to grow them from the basement of a Manhattan Avenue home on the city's West Side.
Police said seven mature marijuana plants, 26 small plants, lights, extension cords, fans, fertilizer, potting soil, reflective paper and other materials used in greenhouse operations were removed from the home Saturday morning after the ex-husband of one of the tenants reported smelling marijuana and seeing the plants through a gap in the door frame.
The man told police he spent the night at the home and discovered the plants the next morning. His ex-wife told police she rents the room out and had no idea what was in it. She declined to provide the name of the tenant, the report says, "due to fear of retaliation."
Another tenant gave police permission to search the room where the suspected marijuana was growing.
The man who reported the violation told police he was concerned for the safety of his minor child who lives with her mother in the home.
Assault-case sentence
YOUNGSTOWN -- A 44-year-old South Side man accused of assaulting Benjamin McGee, the Youngstown city schools superintendent, has been ordered to complete an anger management course.
Reuben L. Smith, of Lakewood Avenue, also was sentenced Monday in Youngstown Municipal Court to a suspended 90-day jail term on the misdemeanor aggravated menacing charge. He was arrested Dec. 17 after a confrontation with McGee outside the board of education headquarters on West Wood Street, city police reports show.
Smith would not serve the jail term unless he violates terms of an 18-month probation that includes attending the course. Judge Robert A. Douglas Jr. also ordered that Smith have no contact with McGee and to pay a $150 fine and $70 court costs.
Smith pleaded no contest to the charge in February and was found guilty. He was accused of pushing McGee in the chest, knocking him to the ground, punching him in the temple and threatening to kill him, city police reports say.
He faced a maximum sentence of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Razor blade found
STRUTHERS -- A woman jailed after failing to appear in court after a traffic citation was charged with possession of a deadly weapon inside a detention center after police caught her trying to conceal a razor blade.
Police were returning Chrystal Johnson, 18, of Upland Avenue, Youngstown, to the Struthers Police Department jail Monday morning when an officer noticed her hands clasped together.
When asked to unclasp her hands so that her handcuffs could be removed, officers observed Johnson place something in her left front shirt pocket. After officers inquired as to what it was, Johnson said it was a candy wrapper. Upon investigation, police discovered the razor blade.
A Struthers judge set her bond set at $2,500.
Shots fired at house
CAMPBELL -- Police are investigating a shooting that sent four bullets into the bedroom of a Monroe Street woman, just missing two children asleep in her bed.
The woman told police that she and her 4-month-old and 3-year-old children were asleep when her boyfriend awoke her sometime after 1 a.m. Friday to see if she was OK and to inform her that the house had been "shot up."
The woman said she'd heard the noise but didn't realize it was gunfire.
She reported the shooting Saturday afternoon because she has no phone and did not want to leave the house immediately after the matter.
Police reports say four bullets entered the woman's bedroom, one lodging about a foot above the bed where the woman and her children had been sleeping. A fifth bullet entered through a downstairs window. No shell casings were found outside the home, police said.