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West Side man arrested after shots fired at girlfriend
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Police recovered a handgun and arrested a man on felonious-assault and weapons charges after an argument early Thursday on the West Side.
William Pietz, 38, of South Lakeview Avenue, is in the Mahoning County jail on charges of felonious assault, being a felon in possession of a firearm and discharging a firearm within city limits.
Pietz was arrested at his home about 1:10 a.m. Thursday. Reports said police were called there for a report of a fight with gunfire, and when they arrived, they saw a 35-year-old woman who said she was the mother of one of Pietz’s children.
The woman told police the two had gone out earlier looking for scrap. When the woman told Pietz she wanted to go home, Pietz became upset and threatened her, reports said.
The woman said when she arrived at their home, she told her children who were inside the car to run inside the house, reports said. She said Pietz pulled a handgun and threatened to hit her in the face with the gun, and she ran toward the home as he fired several shots at her.
The woman got inside and locked the front door, but Pietz was able to get inside through a back door, reports said. The woman was not injured. Pietz was in the kitchen when police arrived.
Officers recovered a 9 mm handgun and also found three spent shell casings in the front yard, reports said.
In October 2013, Pietz was sentenced to a year in prison in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court for threatening a city police officer. In June 2007, Pietz was one of three men who caused a standoff by threatening firefighters who were at a vacant-house fire on East Delason Avenue. He held police at bay for three hours until he was shot in the buttocks with a beanbag round. He surrendered a short time later. He was sentenced to a year in prison on a charge of obstructing official business for that incident.
Reports said Pietz came into his front yard about 45 minutes after firefighters arrived and waved an object in the air that looked like an assault rifle, and firefighters took cover behind their trucks and called police, who in turn responded with the Mahoning Valley Crisis Response Team’s armored vehicle, and it took three hours to get him out of his house.
In 2003, he was sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to a felony domestic-violence charge.