Man killed in chase was released earlier to attend treatment program
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Steven Mango was sentenced to 180 days in jail in April in Columbiana County Municipal Court on a theft charge but was released weeks later to take part in a recovery program.
He was also to be sentenced Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on a felony theft charge. Court records do not indicate if he showed up.
But Thursday, Austintown police say Mango punched an employee at a Mahoning Avenue store and took $50. About two hours later he was dead after leading police on a chase that went the wrong way on Interstate 680 and he was killed after ramming head-on into a tractor-trailer.
Mango, 47, of Hanoverton, served 13 years in prison after a similar chase in 2001.
His record appears to be clean until 2016, when he picked up the theft charge in Mahoning County Area Court in Boardman, and the case was then bound over to a grand jury and Mango was indicted. He pleaded guilty to the charge in May. In the plea agreement, prosecutors said they would stand silent at sentencing.
Columbiana County Municipal Court records show Mango has cases dating back to 1990.
On March 28, he was charged with misdemeanor theft, pleaded no contest April 3 and was found guilty and sentenced to 180 days in jail.
However, court records show on April 24 Mango was released because there was a bed available at the Neil Kennedy Recovery Clinic for a 28-day recovery program. On May 24, a court entry said Mango was still undergoing counseling. The last entry in the file, dated May 31, said “counseling ongoing.” The records referred to a report but the report was not available online.
On Thursday, an employee at the Dollar Tree, 6007 Mahoning Ave., told Austintown police a man came to the counter to purchase a soda at 9:35 a.m. When she opened the register, he punched her in the face, took $50 from the register and fled.
He also stole another employee’s cellphone, which had been sitting on the counter. The employee told police he left in a blue Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck with a blue cap. Austintown police broadcast a description of the truck and Youngstown police spotted it about 11 a.m. in the Shirley Road area.
The truck would not pull over for police and instead went south on Interstate 680, crossing over the freeway just before the turnpike and going north on I-680.
At some point, Mango ended up going north in the southbound lanes of the freeway before he struck a tractor-trailer in the area of the Market Street exit and was killed.
The 2001 chase happened after several robberies Mango was suspected of in Boardman at the time. Township police chased him into Youngstown, where he ended up ramming three cars at the intersection of Youngstown-Poland Road and Midlothian Boulevard.
One of the people in those cars, Phillip Swanter, 34, of Struthers, died about a month later from his injuries.