JJC escapee back in custody

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Authorities are still mulling what additional charges will be filed against a teen who escaped from the Martin P. Joyce Juvenile Justice Center.

Maj. Jeff Allen of the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office said Jeremy Britton, 17, was caught about 10:15 a.m. Thursday at a home in the 400 block of Salt Springs Road on the West Side.

Allen said law-enforcement personnel got a tip a car Britton had been in was at the home. Officers went there, found the car, then asked for permission to search the home.

Britton was found during the search, Allen said. He was returned to the juvenile justice center.

Magistrate Carla Baldwin of Mahoning County Juvenile Court said she is not sure what extra charges Britton will face for his escape, plus a chase that authorities said Britton led them on in a car he took off someone in a strong-armed robbery.

Britton had been missing since Wednesday morning, when staff at the JJC said he scaled a 20-foot fence topped with razor wire, then another smaller fence topped with razor wire.

Authorities said he took a car from someone on Adams Street then led city police and sheriff’s deputies on a chase that reached 100 mph. He drove onto a railroad bed on Hubbard Road and abandoned the car at Logangate Drive in Liberty.

Police searched wooded areas Wednesday in Hubbard and Hubbard Township, along with areas along Hubbard Road on Youngstown’s East Side.

Authorities also checked around several North Side streets, which is where his family lives.

Britton was in the JJC on charges of aggravated robbery. He was one of four people arrested in an April 3 robbery of the Burger King on U.S. Route 224 in Poland.