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Man gets probation in bomb scare
YOUNGSTOWN
About 17 months after creating a bomb scare in Boardman, a 32-year-old man was sentenced to two years’ probation.
Jeremy Sweet of Boardman pleaded guilty to failure to comply and making false alarms Sept. 28 and was sentenced Monday by Judge John M. Durkin. Sweet originally had entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
Atty. Terry Grenga defended Sweet and said her client had paid a price of losing his job because of the felony charges and that medication he was taking for mental-health problems played a part in his actions.
“He was under some mental-health treatments and was taking something he should have not have been given,” Grenga said.
Although Sweet said the medication played a role, “there’s no reason I should have done what I did,” he added.
On June 10, 2009, Sweet was arrested on multiple charges after being accused of threatening to detonate a bomb from his car on U.S. Route 224, near South Avenue. When officers from Youngstown’s bomb squad searched the car, they did not find any explosives, reports stated.
Sweet told police his demand was to expose that teachers in the Lowellville school district were teaching students how to make crack. Police and school officials did investigate the claim without finding anything to support it, according to reports. At Sweet’s sentencing, Judge Durkin said the incident occurred “quite a while ago” and that Sweet had received and was following a mental-health-treatment plan.
“You’ve stayed out of trouble,” he said.