Woman found after cops break off chase

By Joe Gorman | October 23, 2015 at 12:00a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

A woman who was wanted after failing to show up for her sentencing in April on three counts of burglary was arrested at a Mineral Ridge home Wednesday after she failed to pull over for an officer on the East Side.

Stephanie McCourt, 26, was found about 6:20 p.m. by city police, U.S. marshals and other officers at a home on Main Street. She is in the Mahoning County jail on charges of failure to comply with the order or signal of a police officer and driving under suspension, as well as an arrest warrant from common pleas court.

She is expected to be arraigned on the city charges today in municipal court.

Officer Nick Bailey wrote in a report that he was at U.S. routes 62 and 422 running a speed detail when a car driven by McCourt drove by over the speed limit and he tried to stop the car at Albert Street and Route 62.

Instead, she failed to pull over and got on the Madison Avenue Expressway. She was going 90 miles per hour when Bailey broke off the chase, reports said. Reports said that even though he was no longer chasing her, McCourt still was driving at a high speed and passing cars on the right as she headed toward Interstate 680.

Later, U.S. marshals told Bailey that the woman who was driving the car was McCourt and she was wanted on a felony burglary warrant. Bailey headed to Mineral Ridge, where marshals arrested McCourt. Reports said McCourt told Bailey she did not pull over for him because she was scared.

She has a felony failure-to-comply conviction from 2012, court records show, and she was sentenced to one year in prison on that charge that ran concurrent with a forgery charge in an unrelated case.

In 2013, McCourt was indicted on six counts of burglary and in February she pleaded guilty to three counts of burglary, all second-degree felonies. In exchange for her pleas, prosecutors were recommending a sentence of two years on each charge to run concurrent with each other. The highest sentence for a second-degree felony is eight years.

McCourt, however, failed to appear for her sentencing April 10 before Judge Maureen Sweeney, so the judge issued an arrest warrant for McCourt.