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For 12 rapes of woman and her daughter, kidnapping and assault, man get 35 years in prison
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Calling it “one of the most outragous things I’ve ever seen come before this court,” Judge Andrew Logan sentenced Keion L. Stella, 35, of Dunstan Drive Northwest, to 35 years in prison Tuesday for raping an ex-girlfriend and her daughter multiple times in October 2017 while using a gun.
Stella apologized before receiving his agreed-upon sentence in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, saying, “It’s a horrible thing. I can’t make excuses for it.”
Stella pleaded guilty Oct. 30 to 27 charges – 12 rapes, six counts of kidnapping, six counts of felonious assault and three of aggravated burglary.
Diane Barber, assistant county prosecutor, said the first offenses were Oct. 4, 2017, when Stella raped a former girlfriend who had broken off their relationship two or three months earlier. She’d been in a long-term abusive relationship with Stella, Barber said.
He abducted the woman and took her to his apartment, raped and assaulted her for hours and returned her to her home.
Three days later, on Oct. 7, he went to the woman’s home and told her adult son something to cause him to leave, then hit the woman and her daughter in the head and raped them. That episode lasted about four hours.
The victims went to the hospital Oct. 8, 2017, the same day Stella is accused of committing his Mahoning County rapes, also with a gun.
Stella still has a pending case in Mahoning County because of those allegations. His next hearing in that case is at 9 a.m. Nov. 29 before Judge Maureen Sweeney.
In a victim-impact statement read in court Tuesday, the Trumbull County victim said said she and her daughter don’t sleep well.
“Most of the time, my dreams are so real that I am scared to open my eyes because I am scared you are standing over me with a gun,” she said to Stella.
“The most hurtful part of the whole thing is raping my daughter in front of me, and I couldn’t do anything to protect her,” she said, adding, “That will always be in my head.”
Stella hit her and her daughter with gun “repeatedly in the head,” she said. “You have caused so much damage to us – physically and mentally. You just don’t know all the pain you have brought into our lives.”