Girl, 14, reports rape to children services

Girl, 14, reports rape
to children services

HUBBARD — City police are investigating the reported rape of a 14-year-old Mackey Street girl.

According to police reports, the girl told a children services employee that her grandfather had committed sexual acts on her.

Children’s services relayed the information to police.

Sgt. Jim Taafe said police are investigating. The grandfather will be interviewed sometime this week, he said.

Boardman police
investigate break-ins

BOARDMAN — Police are investigating reports of two break-ins and one near break-in of businesses along U.S. Route 224.

Someone pried the rear door to enter Tanfastic and took nearly $200 from a cash register.

At Grecian Gourmet, a back door was pried open and about $120 taken.

At Shanghai River, someone smashed a glass door and police found pry marks on a back door, but the would-be thieves didn’t get into the business. All the incidents occurred between Sunday night and Monday morning.

Apartment robbery
leaves woman without TV

YOUNGSTOWN — Police said someone broke into an apartment in the 600 block of McBride Street and stole a 52-inch big-screen TV.

The tenant said she left home at 9 a.m. Monday and returned at 5 p.m. to find her front door standing open and the apartment ransacked.

Police said entry was gained by pushing aside an air conditioning unit in a bedroom window. The television is valued at $3,000.

Men plead innocent
to breaking and entering

WARREN — Two men pleaded innocent Tuesday in municipal court to breaking and entering. Mark St. Julian, 39, of Mahoning Avenue, Warren, and Donnie Bork, 36, of Vienna Avenue, Niles, have hearings scheduled for July 25 before Judge Thomas Gysegem. Bond was set at $3,500 each.

The owner of a vacant building at 1301 Pine Ave. told police he went into the building about 5:30 p.m. Monday and heard two men talking inside and pointing at copper tubing on the ceiling.

He called police and St. Julian and Bork were arrested. A door on the building had been broken.

Armed man robs
gas station in Niles

NILES — An armed bandit got away with an undisclosed amount of cash Tuesday from McQuaid’s Service Station, 501 Vienna Ave. A clerk told police that the robber, carrying a knife and wearing a blue bandanna over his face, walked into the station shortly before 2 a.m., took cash from the register and fled in an older burgundy-colored Oldsmobile Cutlass.

Attempted rape foiled
in New Castle, police say

NEW CASTLE, Pa. — An interrupted telephone conversation helped stop a man from sexually assaulting a city woman.

Police said a 59-year-old Highland Avenue woman was on the telephone with a friend when a man forced his way into her home and attacked her. Police said the woman on the other end of the telephone conversation could hear the attack and contacted authorities.

Police arrived at the victim’s apartment at 10:24 p.m. Monday and said they found Shawn LaPenta, 34, of Highland Avenue, on top of the victim. Her clothes had been ripped off and she had been punched, threatened with a knife and choked, police said.

LaPenta was charged with aggravated indecent assault, burglary, aggravated assault and criminal attempt at rape.

He was in the Lawrence County Jail Tuesday after failing to post $15,000 bond.

The woman was treated at Jameson Memorial Hospital.

Youngstown man held
on bond in drug case

YOUNGSTOWN — Charles M. Pullen, 25, of Selma Avenue, is in Mahoning County Jail on $100,000 bond after his arraignment on drug charges.

Pullen was arrested late Sunday in an apartment in the 900 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard where police said they found suspected crack cocaine and heroin in a bedroom where he had been sleeping.

He was arraigned Tuesday and faces a preliminary hearing July 24 in municipal court on charges of aggravated trafficking in cocaine and drug abuse of heroin.

Austintown apartment fire
started in clothes basket

AUSTINTOWN — A fire in an apartment on the third floor of a building on Pembrook Road started in a basket of clothes on a table in the kitchen. The township fire department said it does not know how the clothes caught fire. The Metro Arson Task Force from Youngstown is investigating, the Austintown department said. There was smoke damage throughout the building, which has 90 apartments. No one was injured.