Wednesday, March 25, 2015
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Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Martin Desmond tells how Darrell Mason became leader of the Vic Boyz street gang following Mason's sentencing in Common Pleas Court Tuesday for his role as the leader in the gang.
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Footage of Darrell Mason, wearing the #1 jersey, practicing with Ursuline teammates in the summer of 2008.
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Darrell Mason’s athletic prowess at Ursuline High School was something any high-school athlete would pray for.
Which makes the fact he turned to heading up an East Side street gang that dealt drugs and was involved in several shootings all the more maddening, Assistant Prosecutor Martin Desmond said at Mason’s sentencing hearing on drug, weapons and gang charges Tuesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, just before Mason was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Desmond told Judge Maureen Sweeney that Mason, 24, a father of 10, had the skills and talent necessary to escape the life of the streets and crime, but instead he returned to Youngstown to head up the Vic Boyz gang.
Desmond said people would speak of Mason’s athletic talents as a reason why maybe he should be given a break at sentencing because that talent also came with hard work, and that hard work would keep him on the straight and narrow.
Desmond said the opposite was true.
“He had a talent that probably every high-school athlete prays to God and asks if they could have,” Desmond said of Mason, who played football for Ursuline from 2005 to 2008. “He had this chance and threw it all away.”
Desmond was asking Judge Sweeney for a sentence of 12 years for Mason on seven counts of trafficking in marijuana, two counts of trafficking in heroin, one count of trafficking in cocaine, one count of possession of cocaine, two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm and one count of participation in criminal-gang activity.
Desmond said Mason was the leader of the gang, which operated in and around the Victory Arms housing project on the East Side until August 2013, when 16 people were indicted for their roles in the gang. Mason’s case was the last to be resolved. He pleaded guilty to the charges in December.
Mason was a star running back for Ursuline’s state championship football team in 2008. His lawyers, Tom Zena and Miriam Ocasio, were asking for a five- to six-year sentence. They said Mason has accepted responsibility for his crimes and deserves to be punished, but that he deserves a break because the time he was in the gang was just a small part of his life, and that he does not want to lead a life of crime anymore.
More than 20 people were in court to support Mason. Kevin Cylar, Liberty High School’s football coach who coached Mason at Ursuline as an assistant, asked Judge Sweeney for a lenient sentence. He said Mason’s crimes could not be excused, but he cited the lack of role models for Mason as he grew up and the sometimes blinding poverty he endured as a child.
Cylar said Mason went to a junior college in Kansas after high school, but an ankle injury slowed his progress there and forced him to give up football.
“Darrell worked extremely hard to become good,” Cylar said.
Cylar said that if Mason had stayed on the right track, there is no telling how far he could’ve gone.
Nicole Wright, Mason’s mother, told the judge her son grew up in a dysfunctional family, with drugs and alcohol constantly present. She said the family failed Mason when he went to junior college.
“His family as a whole never supported him mentally, physically, emotionally or financially like we should’ve,” she said.
Mason’s father, Darrell Mason Sr., also spoke and said he had failed as a father.
Mason Jr. said he has no excuses for his conduct and accepts responsibility for his actions.
“I can promise you it won’t take me no 6 or 8 or 10 or 12 years to figure out I’ve done wrong,” he said. “I just need a second chance.”