YOUNGSTOWN Punches increase time behind bars

The victim required 54 stitches to close his wounds.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Jacob DiCarlo said he didn't mean to cause so much damage when he punched a fellow inmate at the Mahoning County Jail but isn't sorry he did it.
"I really have no sympathy or remorse for what I did to Daniel Farah," DiCarlo said Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. "It was a fistfight. One or two punches."
Assistant prosecutor Terry Grenga said those punches caused cuts on Farah's face that took 54 stitches to close. They cost DiCarlo two more years in prison.
He was sentenced Wednesday by Judge R. Scott Krichbaum after pleading guilty to felonious assault and intimidating a witness.
DiCarlo and Farah were both behind bars when the fight happened last month. DiCarlo, along with Michael Kapsouris, was on trial in the courtroom of Judge Robert Lisotto for the robbery and slashing of a Youngstown woman at an Austintown Township bank last summer.
They were convicted and sentenced to 13 years apiece in prison. DiCarlo, 22, of Ayrshire Drive, was sentenced to an additional year for an unrelated burglary charge.
Farah, 42, is serving a four-year prison sentence for unrelated charges of theft and receiving stolen property. He had been brought back to the county to testify in the trial against DiCarlo and Kapsouris.
What DiCarlo said
DiCarlo said the assault, which happened just outside an elevator used for transporting inmates, had nothing to do with the fact that Farah was going to testify against him.
DiCarlo said he took exception to something Farah said to him on the elevator but did not elaborate.
"Basically he just disrespected me with what he said, so I punched him," DiCarlo said.
Judge Krichbaum sentenced him to a total of two years in prison, which was recommended in the plea agreement. The time will be served consecutively to the 14 years to which DiCarlo was previously sentenced by Judge Lisotto.
Defense attorney Douglas B. Taylor, who also represented DiCarlo in the robbery-and-slashing trial, said DiCarlo wanted to plead guilty and get the charges behind him as quickly as possible.
bjackson@vindy.com