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Man pleads guilty to gun, drug charge
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A man who was found in a home with several weapons in May during a search for a suspected gang member pleaded guilty to drug and weapon charges Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
Robert Blackshear, 56, of McGuffey Road, pleaded guilty to a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of heroin. Prosecutors are recommending a sentence of 30 months on the gun charge and 18 months on the drug charge to be served concurrently. They also will not oppose a request for judicial release after six months, said Assistant Prosecutor Martin Desmond.
Judge Lou D’Apolito warned Blackshear that if he receives judicial release and is caught with another gun while he is on probation, he will go straight to prison.
“I don’t want you to have a gun,” Judge D’Apolito said. “You will not own or be near or possess or have access to a weapon. If you have a weapon, I will send you to prison.” Blackshear said he understood and said he would not have or be around guns in the future.
“That’s fine with me, your honor,” Blackshear said.
Blackshear has a past conviction in 1989 for carrying a concealed weapon and a 2011 conviction for aggravated assault that prohibit him from owning a firearm. In 2002, he was tried with another man for a murder in 1999 and was found innocent. The other man was found guilty.
Blackshear was arrested May 20 while members of the Mahoning Valley Violent Crimes Task Force were serving a search warrant in a McGuffey Road home. They were looking for a member of the E Block Gang on the West Side who was known to stay at the home.
Blackshear was inside and told police he did not live there, but sometimes a woman he knows lets him stay there. In plain view, officers found a 12-gauge shotgun and two 9 mm handguns, reports said.
Those officers obtained a warrant and searched the rest of the house and found several other weapons, including an SKS assault rifle and a 37 mm grenade launcher. Some grenades for the launcher were found in a plastic bag on the floor. The Youngstown Police Department Bomb Squad was called in to take possession of the grenades.
Also found was a kit for the grenade launcher to convert it to shoot shotgun rounds, reports said. Officers also found a bag of heroin inside the house.
Desmond said Blackshear admitted the shotgun was his but said the other guns did not belong to him. Prosecutors dropped eight counts of the being a felon in possession of a firearm charge in exchange for his plea.
A sentencing date has not been set yet.