Street department chief

Street department chief
YOUNGSTOWN -- Joseph Mastropietro has been appointed head of the city street department.
Mayor George M. McKelvey made the appointment Friday to fill the spot left by Calvin Jones, who retired Thursday after 32 years with the city.
Mastropietro, 45, has been with the department since 1986 in several capacities. He will make $53,039 a year.
The appointment would become permanent after a 90-day probation.
Fatal car crash
CAMPBELL -- Keysharrah Hawkins, 22, of Youngstown was killed early Sunday after the vehicle she was in hit a tree while speeding on 12th Street. The vehicle's driver, Luis Sanchez, 20, also of Youngstown, was taken to St. Elizabeth Health Center, where he was in critical condition today.
Police said the car was northbound on 12th Street when it went off the side of the road and struck the tree. The vehicle spun around and came to rest on the street. Police said the road was wet. Hawkins was forced into the back seat, and partly ejected onto the road from the passenger side door. Neither the driver nor passenger was wearing a seat belt. Sanchez was trapped in the front seat of the vehicle and had to be extricated by Campbell firefighters.
Woman kidnapped
YOUNGSTOWN -- A 30-year-old South Side woman told police that she was kidnapped by a stranger in his 20s who tried to rape her. She said the man offered her a ride as she walked alone on Edwards Street at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday. When she refused, he forced her into his purple Chevrolet Lumina and tried to rape her, police reports show. She said she fought him off and he drove her to Pyatt Street near Plymouth Street, pushed her out of the car and again tried to rape her She pushed him off and ran to a nearby diner. She suffered cuts and scrapes to her elbows and hands.
Assault, rape reported
YOUNGSTOWN -- A 33-year-old East Side woman told city police she was beaten and raped by her 30-year-old boyfriend during a four-hour ordeal that followed an argument. She said they fought at her mother's house at about 6:30 p.m. Sunday and she had agreed to give him a ride to his father's house. As she drove, he beat her and eventually forced her to sit in the passenger seat as he drove through the city's East and South sides, often stopping the car to beat her, once using a stick to hit her ribs.
He forced her into sexual acts several times. After about four hours, the boyfriend drove to his home on Magnolia Avenue, threw her the keys to her car and went inside. She suffered bruised and swollen eyes and bruises and scratches to her head, neck, chest, back, arms and legs.
Jailed in theft
GROVE CITY, Pa. -- Two Youngstown residents remained in Mercer County Jail this morning after they were caught with about $1,000 worth of stolen goods in their vehicle, Pennsylvania State Police said. Police said Charnise L. Dent, 33, and Delbert A. Porch, 28, both of McQuiston Avenue, were stopped for a traffic violation in the westbound lanes of Interstate 80 in East Lackawannock Township around 7:15 p.m. Thursday. They provided false identification information to police, and suspicious troopers discovered the couple had a variety of merchandise that had been reported stolen earlier from eight stores in the Prime Outlet shops in Springfield Township, police said. The pair were arraigned before District Justice Ruth French on charges of receiving stolen property, criminal conspiracy and unsworn falsifications to law enforcement authorities. French ordered them held in county jail pending a preliminary hearing.
Robbed at red light
YOUNGSTOWN -- A man in his 20s robbed a 43-year-old city woman of her purse as she sat in her car at a red light on Fifth Avenue at Rayen Avenue on the city's lower North Side at about 3 p.m. Sunday.
Police seize money
MERCER, Pa. -- Pennsylvania State Police said they seized $137,910 from a vehicle they stopped on a traffic violation in the westbound lanes of Interstate 80 in East Lackawannock Township around 1:30 p.m. Saturday. Police released few details except to say the money was seized and no charges were filed against the driver.