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Repeat North Side burglar headed to trial again
Photo
Walter Kornegay.
YOUNGSTOWN
City police say the recent arrest of one man will mean residents on the North Side can breath a sigh of relief and hold onto their personal possessions a while longer.
Walter Kornegay, 25, is familiar to Youngstown police with a criminal record that could well be longer than his 5-feet-7-inch stature.
Kornegay, of Catalina Avenue on the city’s North Side, is in Mahoning County jail waiting for his June 6 trial on charges of burglarizing a North Side home in March this year. He already has served time in prison for burglary charges.
A check of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court shows that Kornegay has faced felony charges for possession of drugs, domestic violence, theft, receiving stolen property and burglary. His first run-in with police as an adult came in 2004 for domestic violence and endangering children when he was 18.
On April 1, 2010, police accused Kornegay of stealing an air compressor from the unlocked garage of a man he had done yard work for the previous fall in the 400 block of Bradley Avenue. That theft was followed by a burglary in the 2300 block of Selma Avenue the next day.
According to police reports, Kornegay took a snowblower and a weed trimmer from the Selma home. Kornegay was arrested after witnesses saw him pushing the stolen items while riding a mountain bike near Belmont Avenue. The victim identified his belongings and pointed to his initials engraved on the snowblower.
Detective Sgt. Tom Parry said Kornegay ultimately was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison for those burglaries, but his involvement with law enforcement was far from over.
“He had the two receiving-stolen-property charges on him and was sentenced to 18 months at the beginning of last summer but he was released early,” Parry said.
Parry said Kornegay had been out of prison for only weeks when forensic evidence linked him to a burglary committed March 31 on Gypsy Lane.
In that case, police say Kornegay attempted to kick the front door of the home in while the residents were asleep in bed.
Police say when the door would not open, Kornegay threw a brick through a window and crawled into the home, leaving with a large, flat-screen television. The home’s occupants did call police, but when officers arrived, Kornegay was gone. He did, however, leave the blood evidence that would be used in the investigation.
Parry said Kornegay was brought to court on the new burglary charge, and his probation was continued to include that offense, but Kornegay was not yet finished breaking the law, he said.
Detective Sgt. Carl Davis said Kornegay committed another serious aggravated burglary earlier in March — the crime for which he is now in county jail.
According to police, a caretaker and several juveniles at the Redemption House, a group home on Redondo Drive, were leaving for ice cream in March when they noticed a man walking back and forth along Redondo. When the group returned to the home, they saw someone moving around in the house.
Davis said the caretaker asked who was inside the house and the man, later identified as Kornegay, said, “It’s just me.” The caretaker told police Kornegay told him that he entered the home through a window because the lights were on but no one would come to the door and he wanted to make sure everyone was OK.
Reports say the caretaker threatened to call police, but Kornegay put his hand in his jacket as if to retrieve a weapon then said he had a gun and demanded the caretaker’s phone. The caretaker refused to hand over the phone, put all the juveniles back the in car, drove off and called police.
Davis said Kornegay was gone when officers arrived and so was the large, flat-screen TV inside the home. He said the home did have video surveillance, however, and officers quickly identified the face of Kornegay inside the home. Police arrested him a short time later.
“Once he was caught and put in jail, we noticed the burglaries on the North Side dropped drastically,” Davis said. “It’s a quality-of-life issue, and this will mean a lot to the quality of life of those residents.”