Man who shot KFC manager sentenced for another robbery

staff report

YOUNGSTOWN — The man who drew a 50-year prison sentence for shooting and robbing KFC manager Joseph Kaluza last year, leaving Kaluza paralyzed from the neck down, has received an eight-year prison term for an earlier unrelated robbery.

Taran D. Helms, 23, of West Hylda Avenue, drew the eight-year term Thursday from Judge Lou A. D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court for the Dec. 23, 2007, robbery of a woman as she entered her car after leaving Southern Park Mall.

Eight years was the maximum sentence for that robbery, in which there were no injuries and no weapon was reported to have been used. Judge D’Apolito made that prison term concurrent with Helms’ sentence in the Kaluza case.

However, the judge added: “I would have a different view about the sentence had someone been injured seriously.”

Helms was sentenced immediately after he pleaded guilty to, and apologized for, the mall robbery. In that case, Kasey Shidel, assistant county prosecutor, said Helms ran away empty-handed after two witnesses came to the woman’s defense.

Helms wasn’t charged with the mall parking lot robbery until after he was arrested for the March 24, 2008, attack on Kaluza, and a witness and the victim identified him in a photo lineup.

Helms shot and robbed Kaluza after Helms’ girlfriend, Hattie L. Gilbert, 20, of East Judson Avenue, cut off Kaluza’s SUV with her car, causing Kaluza to rear-end her car in a staged crash on South Avenue. The robbery occurred while Kaluza was en route to make a $300 bank deposit for KFC.

After a jury convicted them, Judge Timothy E. Franken gave Helms and Gilbert maximum consecutive sentences totaling 50 years each in prison.

A Western Reserve Transit Authority bus security camera caught the staged crash on videotape, and the tape helped detectives identify and find Gilbert’s car near her residence, where she was arrested.