Convicted felon jailed on probation violation

By Ed Runyan

The burglar could now get nine years in prison.

WARREN — Jason Kirkpatrick, the man convicted of 16 break-ins across Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties last month but sent to a faith-based substance-abuse treatment center in Detroit instead of prison, is back in Trumbull County Jail.

And during the week or so he was on the loose, it’s possible he committed additional break-ins, police say.

Kirkpatrick, 29, who has had various addresses in Trumbull County over the past 10 years, was arrested Friday morning at his father’s house on Vine Street in Warren on a warrant for a probation violation.

U.S. marshals took him to county jail, where he is locked up without bond and awaits a hearing before Judge John M. Stuard of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court and a possible nine-year prison sentence.

The probation violation is for being thrown out of Life Challenge of Detroit, said Jeff Hoolihan, a Warren detective. Judge Stuard assigned him to the facility, which provides faith-based treatment.

But he lasted there only a week, Hoolihan said. No longer being at the facility triggered a probation violation and a warrant for his arrest, Hoolihan said.

Hoolihan doesn’t know what caused Kirkpatrick to get kicked out, and a call to Life Challenge on Friday was not returned.

Hoolihan earlier this week complained that sentencing Kirkpatrick to probation after being convicted of 17 felonies and spending most of the last 11 years in prison is ridiculous.

“This is a slap in the face to law enforcement and all the [police officers] who worked hard to bring [Kirkpatrick] to justice,” he said.

A 28-officer department task force worked on the Kirkpatrick case, as well as putting together cases against two of Kirkpatrick’s accomplices and 15 other burglars charged in a separate burglary ring.

Pastor Chuck Gantz, a minister who volunteers for the Youngstown chapter of the faith-based organization Teen Challenge, recommended Life Challenge to Judge Stuard, and the judge agreed to put Kirkpatrick in the program, despite the judge’s initial reluctance.

“The problem with this case is that we have a fellow that has been in prison three times before,” Judge Stuard said at Kirkpatrick’s Sept. 18 sentencing hearing.

“He’s probably one of the better examples of somebody that should enter into the program like that,” he continued, according to a transcript of the sentencing.

But Judge Stuard said he would not “because it is necessary in my mind that he do incarceration time before he’s available for such a program.”

After some more words from Gantz, however, Judge Stuard changed his mind. Kirkpatrick could attend Life Challenge for the first 12 months of his sentence, plus another four years of probation, Judge Stuard said.

Judge Stuard gave Kirkpatrick a warning, however.

“Should you not successfully complete [Life Challenge], and be expelled from it through your own misdeeds, this court, as I have stated to you, will impose a more severe sentence than I would have originally, and that will be nine years in prison.”

Hoolihan said Kirkpatrick is a suspect in several residential and commercial burglaries committed in Struthers and Campbell over the past week after Kirkpatrick had left Life Challenge.

Struthers Police Chief Robert Norris confirmed that Kirkpatrick is a suspect in the burglary of Cigarettes For Less on Youngstown-Poland Road, which occurred Thursday night, but it’s too early to say whether Kirkpatrick did it.

A detective from the Campbell Police Department could not be reached Friday afternoon.

runyan@vindy.com