Felon gets 17-year term in assault, carjacking

The man being sentenced has a history of violent crime.

YOUNGSTOWN — A man with previous murder and robbery convictions will serve 17 years in prison for assaulting and carjacking a 78-year-old Austintown woman at the Cornersburg Giant Eagle last fall.

Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court imposed the sentence Thursday on Arthur G. Williams, 50, of Summer Street, who pleaded guilty in June to aggravated robbery, felonious assault and failure to comply with a police order.

“I think the public needs to be afraid of you,” Judge Durkin told Williams, who apologized in court for his actions. “I must ensure, Mr. Williams, that, when you get out of prison at the age of 67, that you are not capable of harming anybody else,” the judge added.

Judge Durkin sentenced Williams to consecutive prison terms of nine years for aggravated robbery, seven years for felonious assault and one year for failure to comply.

Williams was charged with taking the woman’s purse and slashing her chin with a box-cutter before she rolled out of her car onto the Canfield Road grocery store’s parking lot pavement, and he fled in her car. Police spotted and pursued the car, arresting Williams on the South Side shortly after the 8:30 p.m. robbery Oct. 9.

The victim, who did not appear in court for Williams’ sentencing, received two stitches and a tetanus shot, and later retrieved her purse and car from police.

Williams was imprisoned after being convicted of the 1974 murder of a North Side jeweler and paroled in 1986. He was sent to prison again for a 1990 aggravated robbery and paroled in 2004.