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Man pleads guilty to shooting YSU student
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Prosecutors are recommending a six-year prison term for a Pittsburgh man who pleaded guilty in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to charges he shot a Youngstown State University student last February.
Sylean Wilson, 20, will be sentenced April 17 by Judge John Durkin. Wilson pleaded guilty Monday to four counts of felonious assault and a firearm specification, the day jury selection for a trial in his case was set to begin.
At one point in the morning, Wilson had said through his attorney Walter Madison that he wanted to go to trial but then changed his mind after again conferring with his attorney.
Wilson was accused of an early-morning shooting Feb. 17, 2013, on Pennsylvania Avenue on the North Side near off-campus housing for YSU students that injured Brittany Johnson, 23, of Bedford Heights. She was a nursing student at the university.
Police said Johnson stood on the corner of Pennsylvania and fired several shots at a vehicle Johnson was in. She was struck in the torso.
Meghan Brundage, an assistant county prosecutor, said after court the victim had no ties to Wilson. Wilson said in court in response to a question by Judge Durkin that someone in another car fired several shots at him, and he returned fire, which was when Johnson was struck.
Judge Durkin said the victim had been contacted by the prosecutor’s office about the plea deal and she did not oppose it.
In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors are recommending that Wilson be sentenced to three years for each count of felonious assault, with all of those sentences running concurrently but consecutive to a three-year sentence for the gun specification.
Wilson has no prior criminal record.
Another man, Rashaud Lewis, 20, also of Pittsburgh, has pleaded guilty to tampering-with-evidence charges in the case after being accused of trying to keep police out of the building Wilson was in when officers were called.
Police said Wilson ran into a Pennsylvania Avenue apartment building after the shooting, where he later was captured by police.
Lewis is accused of slamming the door to the building on approaching officers, obstructing them from entering to search for Wilson.
Neither man was a YSU student.
Judge Durkin is set to sentence Lewis on March 25.