Man pleads guilty in burglary

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A 26-year-old North Side man with a lengthy criminal record pleaded guilty to new charges of burglary and receiving stolen property.

Water Kornegay, of Catalina Avenue, entered his pleas Monday before Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, who will sentence him at 9 a.m. Jan. 5. Kornegay entered his pleas the day his jury trial had been scheduled to start.

The burglary charge pertains to his unauthorized entrance through a window March 18 at the Redemption House group home on Redondo Road, from which a 42-inch flat-screen television was taken.

Kornegay entered an Alford plea to a robbery charge in connection with a confrontation in which he told an arriving group-home caregiver, who saw him leave the home through a window, that he had a gun and demanded the caregiver’s cellphone.

In an Alford plea, the defendant maintains his innocence but acknowledges that, if the case were to go to trial, the evidence would be sufficient for a jury to convict him.

Kornegay, who was arrested on the burglary warrant March 25 in the Ohio Adult Parole Authority office, pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property in connection with a 2010 Chevrolet Impala that was stolen March 16.

If he were to receive maximum consecutive sentences on these new charges, he’d serve 171/2 years in prison.