Thursday, January 24, 2008
A juvenile who participated in the burglary was detained only a couple of weeks, the victim said.
By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN — A 50-year-old Norwood Avenue woman told Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that installing a security system in her home hasn’t taken away the fear she now has of being robbed.
“I don’t feel safe in my home anymore after living there 15 years,” she said Wednesday after one of the two men who invaded her North Side home in September was sentenced for the crime.
The woman said she now listens for every little sound in the home and frequently has trouble falling back to sleep if she hears something at night. Installing an alarm system after the robbery hasn’t helped much, she said.
Before sentencing Eugene Bowens, 20, of 861 West Woodland Ave., Youngstown, to the maximum of 18 months in prison, Judge Krichbaum said he would not be sentencing him to probation despite this being his first felony offense — because he considers breaking into someone’s home to be among the worst crimes a person can commit.
“I have long believed that someone who violates the sanctity of another’s home ... needs to be punished,” Judge Krichbaum said.
“In your case, probation is not the answer,” Judge Krichbaum told Bowens. “The courts were lenient with you before, and that didn’t work before.”
Judge Krichbaum noted that Bowens had been convicted of several charges while under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court system but had gotten probation each time.
Bowens pleaded guilty in November to a reduced charge of burglary. Before that he faced a second-degree felony punishable by up to eight years in prison.
The victim said that she wishes Bowens would have gotten a longer sentence and that the 15-year-old neighbor who committed the robbery with Bowens apparently spent only a couple of weeks in juvenile detention after his sentencing.
The 15-year-old told a juvenile court judge at his sentencing that he participated in the burglary because someone dared him, the woman said.
According to police, Bowens and the boy broke in through a basement door about 9:30 p.m. Sept. 20, doing $350 worth of damage to the door. They then took the woman’s big-screen plasma television off the wall.
The woman had recently come home from receiving chemotherapy treatments and was in her bedroom when she heard the sound of the door being broken, she said. The woman went downstairs and saw the two males in her house, causing them to drop the television and run.
However, the woman recognized the 15-year-old, whom she knew from the neighborhood, and got a good look at Bowens. Both were arrested the next day.
runyan@vindy.com