CLEVELAND Attacker of homeless gets jail time

The judge wanted to withhold holiday meals from the man during his incarceration.
STAFF/WIRE REPORTS
CLEVELAND -- A judge has sentenced a 19-year-old Austintown man to three months in jail for attacking homeless men with a stun gun and videotaping it.
Cleveland Municipal Judge C. Ellen Connally made it clear that the sentence given Monday to Joshua Langenheim of Redgate Lane was meant to punish him by keeping him behind bars for the holidays.
"If I could order it, I'd order no Thanksgiving dinner, no Christmas dinner while you are there," she said. "You don't deserve it."
Langenheim also must do 150 hours of service working with the homeless.
The attacks
He and three friends were arrested in the Aug. 9 attacks in which homeless men in downtown Cleveland were kicked, urinated on and shocked with a stun gun. Some of the men were asleep on park benches or in doorways when the attacks occurred, police said.
Their videotape showed the four, who had been skateboarding, laughing as they filmed the antics. The other three, also from the Youngstown area, were charged as juveniles and their cases are before Juvenile Court. Their names have not been released.
Langenheim, charged as an adult, pleaded no contest to three misdemeanor assault charges.
"I've never seen anything like it in 18 years, except on TV," Sgt. Ray Burner said after the arrests. "Did you ever see the movie 'Jackass'? Well, that's essentially what we're talking about."
The movie and MTV series featured potentially harmful stunts that viewers were warned not to try at home.
Car broke down
Police said they were arrested after their car broke down on a downtown street and another motorist stopped to help about 3:30 a.m. Aug. 9. The teenagers ran, and the motorist talked with a nearby homeless man who told him about the attacks.
The motorist, Joseph Wright, 35, flagged down a motorcycle police officer and told him what had happened.
"Talk about America's dumbest criminals," Wright said. "Their car was broken down in front of the justice center, and the camera and videocassettes were inside it."