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Man involved in hostage-taking sentenced to 23 years in prison
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Though he has not been charged in the April 23 hostage-taking of a Trumbull County jail corrections officer, Richard G. Ware is paying the price for it.
Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court sentenced Ware to 23 years in prison as punishment for three separate robberies last December, two of them involving a weapon.
Ware, 27, of North Leavitt Road, pleaded guilty in August to three counts of aggravated robbery and one count of felonious assault. He could have gotten up to 44 years in prison.
Judge Logan on Tuesday cited Ware’s previous convictions, probation violations, lack of remorse and the seriousness of the three aggravated robberies as reasons for stacking some of the sentences on top of the other.
“These are the worst kinds of cases,” the judge said. He did not mention the jail incident, though the prosecutor and defense attorney both did.
Several months ago, Ware was offered a plea agreement in the robberies that would have resulted in a 10-year prison term, but prosecutors revoked that offer after Ware was accused in the hostage incident, said defense attorney Daniel Keating.
The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation has completed its investigation of the hostage incident, but no charges have yet been filed.
Jail officials identified Ware and the two other inmates as having held the corrections officer hostage with a plastic knife.
One of the others is David Martin, 30, who was sentenced Wednesday in Judge Logan’s court after a jury found him guilty of killing Jeremy Cole, 21, and wounding Melissa Putnam, 30, both of Warren, in September 2012. The same jury recommended that Martin get the death penalty.
The third man accused in the hostage taking is Kevin Johns, 24, of Cincinnati, who Judge Logan sentenced to 28 years in prison April 15 for raping one woman and kidnapping another in 2013.
Mike Burnett, an assistant county prosecutor, affirmed Keating’s contention that the 10-year offer was rescinded because of the hostage situation.
But one of Ware’s victims was a 73-year-old man, and Ware “takes no responsibility for his actions,” Burnett said.
Police said Ware hit a 73-year-old man with his own cane during a robbery on Monroe Street on Dec. 11, 2013.
He also robbed the CVS pharmacy on East Market Street with a knife Dec. 17, 2013.
And he robbed a man at Woodland Avenue and Chestnut Street Northeast on Dec. 4, 2013, and pistol-whipped him, causing a laceration that required staples to close.
Before the sentencing, Ware told Judge Logan, “I just want to apologize for my actions.”