Addict who asked for help is behind bars

October 27, 2015 at 12:00a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

Katie Grist barely lasted a week out of jail.

The 28-year-old heroin addict – who said she never had been given a chance at rehabilitation, then was allowed to choose her rehab program in September – was arrested Friday on a parole violation by the Adult Parole Authority.

Officials with Mahoning County Common Pleas Court said the arrest came after Grist admitted to probation officers that she had broken the terms of her probation by using drugs Oct. 18.

She will have a status hearing Wednesday before Judge Lou D’Apolito, who signed the entry to have Grist arrested for violating her probation in a 2011 burglary case.

Grist was arrested in July with more than 30 other people as part of a sweep of heroin traffickers and users. She pleaded guilty at a Sept. 14 hearing before Judge Shirley J. Christian to several charges of heroin possession, admitting she had been using heroin daily in March of this year. She appeared before Judge D’Apolito the same day because her arrest in the heroin case was a violation of her burglary sentence from a 2011 case.

Grist has a criminal record dating back to 2004, almost all of the arrests for theft or burglary offenses because she was stealing to support her heroin addiction.

In court Sept. 14, Grist told both judges she had been clean for several months before she was indicted in the heroin case and wanted to go to a rehab facility of her own choosing. Judge D’Apolito and Judge Christian agreed to let her go to the place she picked after she was finished serving a probation violation sentence from Mahoning County Area Court in Boardman. She was released from the jail on that sentence Oct. 10.

She asked to meet with a Vindicator reporter while she was in the county jail to tell her side after she was featured in a story that focused on repeat drug offenders. She had said in that story that even though she had been sentenced to the drug-treatment program at Community Corrections Association several times and had failed to complete it, she still felt she never was given a fair chance at getting help for her addiction.

The status hearing that is scheduled for Wednesday was scheduled when she appeared before Judge D’Apolito, who told her he wanted to see the progress she was making after she was released from jail.

She has a Nov. 6 sentencing date in the case before Judge Christian.