Berlin Center teen on probation in stabbing of Campbell man

‘There’s an element of self-defense here,’ judge says.

YOUNGSTOWN — A 19-year-old Berlin Center man is on probation for five years after pleading guilty to aggravated assault in a fight in which he stabbed and critically wounded a Campbell man with a pocket knife in April.

Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court imposed the sentence Friday on Antonio Morales of Leffingwell Road and ordered him to spend the first four to six months of his probation in residence at the Community Corrections Association halfway house on Market Street.

Morales, originally charged with felonious assault, had pleaded guilty in August to a reduced charge of aggravated assault. The reduced charge said Morales acted under provocation from the victim.

Morales and the victim, Benjamin Chaibi, 21, of Campbell, had been arguing over an undisclosed matter April 29 at a house on Ohio Avenue in Youngstown when Chaibi suffered cuts to his throat and left hand and a puncture wound in his right shoulder, police said.

In sentencing Morales to probation, the judge noted Morales had no prior juvenile or adult criminal record and Morales’ expression of “genuine remorse.”

Morales told the judge Chaibi confronted him, threatened to beat him up for no reason, and later ran out of the back door of the house, surprised him as he was leaving, and punched him in the head and face. “I told him to quit. I tried to get away. He grabbed me again and kept punching me. ... He just didn’t like me,” Morales told the judge.

“This guy was coming at you; and there’s an element of self-defense here,” the judge said. However, the judge added: “You can’t run around with a knife and defend yourself from some bully with a knife because someone could get hurt bad like this bully did.”

Chaibi was not in court for Morales’ sentencing because he was being held in Campbell City Jail on an unrelated matter.