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City man gets 7-year prison term for assaulting, kidnapping woman
By JOHN W. GOODWIN JR.
YOUNGSTOWN
A city man convicted of kidnapping and assaulting his former girlfriend has been sentenced to seven years in prison.
Hester Howell Jr., 40, appeared Wednesday before Judge Lou D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court for sentencing on charges of misdemeanor assault and kidnapping. A jury found the South Side man guilty of the charges in April, but found him not guilty of attempted murder and felonious assault.
Howell was facing a maximum of 101/2 years in prison on the kidnapping and assault charges, plus an additional three years for a gun specification attached to the charges.
Howell has been incarcerated in the county jail for 764 days.
Before sentencing, he also pleaded no contest to a charge of illegally possessing a firearm and was found guilty. Judge D’Apolito said that charge was handled separately as to not prejudice the jury in Howell’s kidnapping, attempted- murder and assault trial.
Gabriel Wildman, an assistant county prosecutor, asked the court to impose the maximum sentence on Howell. That would have placed Howell behind bars for more than 13 years.
Attorney Paul Conn, representing Howell, however, asked the court to impose a minimal sentence on Howell because, he said, Howell has been incarcerated for nearly two years without a single incident in the county jail and has taken part in substance-abuse programs during that time.
“He is taking steps to improve himself,” Conn said.
Judge D’Apolito made mention of Howell’s illegal possession of a firearm before passing sentence.
“No matter how you cut this, you are a guy who should not have had a gun,” he said. “You cannot have a gun.”
The judge ultimately sentenced Howell to six months in prison on the misdemeanor charge to run concurrently with a four-year sentence on the kidnapping charge. The mandatory three-year sentence on the gun specification is to run consecutively to those charges.
Judge D’Apolito also sentenced Howell to a four-year term for illegally possessing a firearm. That sentence is to run concurrently with the kidnapping sentence.
In July 2008, police were sent to the 2500 block of Glenwood and found Howell’s 41-year-old girlfriend naked and bleeding from the head. She told officers she had managed to escape from Howell’s home and flag down a passing motorist, who took her to a pay phone to call 911.
The injured woman said she and Howell, 38 at the time, had been drinking at a barbecue on Marion Avenue before the attack, reports show.
She told police that Howell demanded they leave the party, and once back at his place, he accused her of infidelity, forced her to strip and punched her repeatedly before firing three rounds between her legs as she sat on the floor.
After about three hours, she was able to escape, she said.