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Man pleads in chase, manhunt
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A man already serving a 21-year federal prison sentence for leading police on a chase last year – and ramming their cruisers and shooting at them – pleaded guilty to state charges Monday.
Luis Cruz Ramos, 31, pleaded guilty before Judge John Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to charges of failure to comply, 11 counts of felonious assault on a police officer, being a felon in possession of a firearm and three separate firearm specifications for the chase and manhunt last spring.
Ramos is accused of leading Campbell police on a chase March 30, 2016, after they tried to serve a warrant for him.
During the chase, Ramos is accused of ramming and shooting at officers from Campbell, Boardman and Youngstown before abandoning the van he was driving on Interstate 680 south and running.
He eluded police until April 1 when he was found on a South Side street and wounded by U.S. Marshals after they said he pulled a gun on them.
He faces a sentence anywhere from 26 years to more than 100 years. Prosecutors want his sentence to run consecutively to the sentence he is serving in federal court.
Sentencing will be 10:30 a.m. Monday.
In January, Ramos was in court to take a plea in the case but at the time he balked at the deal offered by prosecutors because he said it would put him in prison until he was 70. Prosecutors were looking for him at the time to serve a 19-year sentence consecutive to his federal sentence.
In court Monday, Assistant Prosecutor Martin Desmond said there was no sentence agreed upon between himself and defense attorney Doug Taylor. After court, Desmond said he would ask for a sentence that was longer than the one Ramos is serving in federal custody.
Despite arguments by defense counsel that Ramos should receive a sentence less than the federal one because no one was injured during the chase and manhunt other than Ramos, Desmond said a long sentence is necessary to deter people from shooting or otherwise harming police officers.
“Just because he missed he doesn’t get credit for that,” Desmond said.
Ramos spoke through an interpreter during the hearing, and still walked with a limp from the leg wound he sustained last April when he was shot by police.