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Man gets 19 years for shooting
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Kevin Wright maintained his innocence in a February 2011 shooting just before he was sentenced to 19 years in prison in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
Wright, 30, of Bauker Street, asked Judge Maureen Sweeney for leniency because he has two children, and they need their father.
“I just ask that you take that into consideration,” Wright said Friday.
Prosecutors were asking for a sentence of 23 years.
Wright was convicted by a jury in April of five counts of felonious assault and two counts of shooting into a habitation for shooting at an SUV on Feb. 1, 2011, on Jacobs Road, as a man was there looking for his wife.
The case took so long to prosecute because the man’s wife did not talk to police until February 2013. Both the man and his wife were in court and together but did not address the judge.
Wright’s mother, Janice Wright, broke into tears as she asked Judge Sweeney for a light sentence.
“Please have mercy on him. Please,” Janice Wright said. “He’s innocent.”
Assistant Prosecutor Rob Andrews said Wright fired 20 shots at the SUV, and that four children were inside the vehicle at the time of the shooting. No one was injured.
Andrews conceded that while he had argued at trial that Wright wanted to kill the man, there was no evidence to show he knew the children were in the SUV.
Andrews asked for a sentence of eight years on the count pertaining to the man, plus four two-year sentences on the counts involving the children to run concurrent to each other and consecutive to the eight years, and five years for each count of shooting into a habitation, to run consecutive to the 10-year sentences for felonious assault, along with a three-year firearm specification.
Two homes were also damaged by gunfire during the shooting. Andrews did say that Wright should have known that firing that many shots at a vehicle that he should have known some of them would miss and could hurt someone else.
Wright’s attorney, Mark Lavelle, asked for a sentence of 11 years.
Wright faced a potential sentence of 77 years if he was sentenced to the maximum term on each charge with a firearm specification attached to each charge.