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90-day jail term for couple
YOUNGSTOWN
A couple convicted of falling asleep in a house they were supposedly burglarizing will spend the next 90 days in jail after admitting to a judge they had been using drugs while out on bond.
Rafaelle Daye, 38, and Tyrone Gregory, 32, both of Austintown, were sentenced Wednesday before Judge Lou A. D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. The pair previously had pleaded guilty to a fourth-degree felony burglary charge.
The pair originally had been indicted on a charge of second-degree burglary, but that charge was amended in exchange for their guilty pleas.
Daye and Gregory were supposed to be in court by 9 a.m., but failed to show for the hearing, prompting defense lawyer Thomas E. Zena, representing Gregory, to volunteer to go pick up the couple from their Austintown apartment.
The hearing eventually did take place before the lunch hour and Michael McBride, an assistant county prosecutor, recommended the pair be sentenced to an in-house drug treatment program.
Zena told the court the circumstances around the burglary were unusual, but it is important to note that neither Daye or Gregory had been in trouble with the law since the burglary and they did not actually take anything during the incident.
Atty. Doug Taylor, representing Daye, told the court his client, the mother of five children, has a long history of mental- and substance-abuse issues. He said those issues must be addressed.
Judge D’Apolito asked both Daye and Gregory what would be the results if he made them submit to a drug test.
They both told the judge the test would show they had recently taken illegal drugs.
Judge D’Apolito sentenced the pair to one-year probation with the first 90 days to be served in Mahoning County jail. They must both complete treatment programs after being released.
The judge said the 90-day incarceration will help assure that Daye and Gregory are sober when they start the treatment program.
“My concern is that if I don’t do something to get you off drugs you will be back with the same situation. The problem we have here is the drug problem and the unemployment problem,” he said. “I have to get you off the drugs, and the only way to do that is to separate you from the drugs. ... I don’t want a woman high on drugs taking care of those kids.”
City police were sent to a home in the 2000 block of Summer Street on the South Side in early September after a 27-year-old woman realized someone entered her home by a front window that had been shattered.
The woman told officers she walked into the bedroom and found Daye and Gregory sleeping in her bed.
The woman called 911 and screamed at the intruders, “What are you doing in my house?” Reports say Daye and Gregory awoke and simply walked out the front door.
Police arrested the pair less than a block away from the house.
Daye and Gregory told the judge they were homeless at the time of the incident and had previously been given permission to stay at the house, but not on the day of the incident.