Man sentenced to two years for downtown attack

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A man who pleaded guilty to an attack on a woman downtown in September was sentenced to two years in prison.

Mateen Abdullah, 51, was sentenced Thursday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court by Judge John Durkin for a count of abduction, to which he pleaded guilty in February.

At the time of the plea, prosecutors recommended a sentence of two years.

Abdullah was arrested by police Sept. 10 in an attack on a woman Sept. 3 downtown.

The woman said in a police report that she was walking out of 20 Federal Place at 7 p.m. Sept. 3 when a man followed her out of the building and asked her why she was walking on the street by herself.

The woman said she was walking to meet her boyfriend, and the man grabbed her by her hair and demanded a kiss. She tried to pull away, but the man said he would kill her if she screamed. She screamed anyway, and the man ran away, reports said.

The woman then ran back to 20 Federal Place and called for help. Abdullah was arrested after the woman spotted him downtown while she was going to work and alerted police.

He was given credit for 210 days already served in the county jail since his arrest.