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‘Monster’ gets 48 years in prison for assaults on Weathersfield boy, family
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Even Michael Peach admitted in documents to being a “monster” for the sexual assaults he committed against a boy and physical assaults against the boy’s family last year.
On Thursday, Peach, 41, of Trumbull Drive, Niles, got 48 years in prison – long enough, prosecutors hope, that he won’t ever be able to victimize anyone again.
Peach pleaded guilty in April to 18 felony charges, including gross sexual imposition against the boy, 9.
But Peach also pleaded guilty to many other charges related to an apparent attempt to kill the boy and his family to cover up his crimes after the boy reported them to his mother, prosecutors said.
Gabe Wildman, assistant prosecutor, told Judge Ronald Rice of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court that Peach was twice convicted of sex crimes against boys in Stark County before his Trumbull County crimes.
Early on Dec. 9, 2016, Peach went to the boy’s home on Poplar Street in Weathersfield Township wearing a ski mask and carrying a hunting knife, stun gun and backpack containing duct tape and rope, Wildman said in a court document.
He found the boy’s mother in the house and used the stun gun on her while demanding that she tell him where to find the boy, who was hiding in the home. She was holding her toddler at the time.
But because of a phone call to the boy’s father from the boy’s mother, his father was able to come to the house and fight off Peach and disarm him.
Peach ran away and led police on a high-speed chase that ended in a wooded area and Peach trying to kill himself by cutting his own throat, the document says.
In sentencing Peach, Judge Rice called Peach’s actions “a diabolical attack on a young mother and her children in order to cover up your heinous, awful misdeeds.” He called the collection of weapons he brought “your own special murder backpack.”
The boy’s mother gave a victim-impact statement during the sentencing, saying she feels terrible for letting herself be deceived by Peach’s deceptions in order to get her son alone.
Peach was her supervisor at her debt-collection job in Weathersfield Township but never knew that Peach was a convicted sex offender, she said. Peach was convicted of gross sexual imposition in 1996 and 1997.
“What I didn’t know was I was being groomed and set up to practically hand-deliver my son to a predator,” she said.
“I can’t imagine how scared my son was, hiding and listening to his mom and baby brother screaming as we were being attacked,” she said.
The boy’s father described Peach’s behavior in the house to be like “Michael Myers from the Halloween horror-movie series,” according to a court document.
The judge said to the boy’s father: “Well done, sir. You deserve the recognition and thanks of our community. You are a hero and deserve recognition as one.”
Peach admitted in documents police found that he is a “monster” for what he did.