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Judge: Escape from cell was a first
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Though Sunday was not the first time someone has escaped from the Trumbull County Juvenile Justice Center on Main Avenue Southwest, it’s the first time it has resulted from someone escaping from their cell, Judge Pam Rintala said Wednesday.
Judge Rintala, of family court, said two male juvenile offenders “jimmied” the locks on their cells, enabling them to get into the adjacent hallway, where an attendant counselor, or guard, spotted them and yelled for them to get back in their cells.
Instead, they walked through a propped-open door, then through a door to the control room, which was left ajar, to get into the control room.
One of the two, Don Tay Johnson, 16, then made it the rest of the way out of the building. He is still at large.
The female guard, who then wrestled with Johnson, in the control room also told an investigator from the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office that a fellow staff member told her there were rumors that juvenile offenders were planning an escape.
Judge Rintala said she believes the door was left ajar because of a ventilation problem, and the attendant counselor didn’t take the threat of a breakout seriously because no such incident had occurred at the facility in the past 20 years.
“For them to say they’re going to get out, it’s just hard to imagine how they would get out of a locked cell,” Judge Rintala said.
“You think they are asleep in their cells,” Judge Rintala said, adding that the combination of events that led to Johnson’s escape at 11:50 p.m. was a “perfect storm” of unfortunate incidents.
Judge Rintala said maintenance employees have made adjustments to the cells since Sunday to prevent a repeat of such an incident.
Maintenance employees also have done all they could in recent years to maintain the switchboard panel in the control room.
The panel controls the locks throughout the facility, but it’s most likely time to replace it, Judge Rintala and the other family court judge, Richard James, said Wednesday.
The judges said there are flaws in the switchboard panel, so it should be replaced. Most of the equipment at the facility was installed before the center’s opening in 1988.
The judges wrote to Trumbull County commissioners Tuesday indicating that replacement parts for the panel are most likely unavailable or cost-prohibitive.
Judge Rintala estimates a new panel will cost around $50,000.
The judges said the escape also “once again reveals the glaring need to upgrade our surveillance and monitoring system.”
The judges said inmates most likely didn’t know this, but the video surveillance equipment in the facility was not working at the time of the escape.
Judge Rintala said that’s because wiring work was done just last week on installation of a new surveillance system — part of a video upgrade being done in the juvenile and common pleas courts — and no monitoring equipment was operable at the time of Sunday’s escape.
The two other times when juveniles escaped from the building were when a juvenile escaped through a window and when a juvenile escaped over a wall, Judge Rintala said.
Trumbull County Commissioner Dan Polivka said he’s interested in knowing whether “operational” issues might also need to be addressed, but commissioners will work with the facility to address its needs.