Austintown killer gets 26 years to life

No sentence could be harsh enough, a murder victim’s sister says.

THE VINDICATOR

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — The holiday season intensified the distress of a bereaved family at a murderer’s sentencing, nearly a year after a brutal mid-December homicide.

“Our family now has an empty seat at every family gathering. The holidays will never be the same for us,” said Pam Constantino of Cuyahoga Falls.

Constantino is the sister of Robin L. Kellar, who was robbed, beaten to death and burned just before Christmas 2006 in her Austintown apartment.

“Robin’s life ended way too early. The pain the Kellar family shares is way too much for any family to bear. The sentencing today could never be strong enough,’’ Constantino told Judge R. Scott Krichbaum before he imposed 26 years to life in prison on the murderer, Gregg A. Jenkins, 32.

“She was only 45 years old. She had her whole life ahead of her still, and this person took it away,” said the victim’s son, Army Pfc. Josh Kellar of Fort Lee, Va. “I was her whole world, and she was mine. ... She dedicated her life to me,” he said of his mother.

Judge Krichbaum told Jenkins on Friday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court: “I have imposed a life sentence upon you, and that’s what I intend for you to serve.”

The judge imposed the sentence on Jenkins in the death of his Compass West apartment complex neighbor last Dec. 15.

The county coroner found Kellar suffered a skull fracture and died from a blunt force head injury. Kellar wasn’t shot, but was beaten, possibly with a gun, police said.

Jenkins pleaded guilty in October to aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and aggravated arson with a firearm specification.

At the urging of the prosecution and defense, Judge Krichbaum imposed 20 years to life for the murder, plus three consecutive years for the gun specification and a combined three-year term for the robbery and arson, for a 26-year minimum total sentence. Jenkins will get credit for nearly a year in jail since his Dec. 18, 2006, arrest.

Robert Bush, chief of the criminal division in the county prosecutor’s office, said the prosecution dropped its pursuit of the death penalty because autopsy results showed Kellar was already dead before the fire erupted.

Jenkins apologized in court to the Kellar family for his actions, but denied deliberately setting the blaze. Despite his earlier guilty plea to the arson charge, Jenkins said Friday that the fire originated accidentally from a burning cigarette.

“If I could go back and change time, which I can’t, I would change that day,” Jenkins said.

Defense lawyer James Gentile said an appeal is unlikely.

“He pleaded [guilty] to what he did, and it calls for a harsh sentence, and I think the sentence was appropriate,” Bush said after court.