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Possible penalty for Girard man shooting into tavern is 100 years
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Ryan N. Rulong, 27, convicted on all 16 charges and gun specifications he faced for shooting up the University at Larchmont tavern May 10, could get more than 100 years in prison when he’s sentenced at 10 a.m. Friday.
A jury found him guilty Wednesday of eight counts of attempted murder and eight counts of felonious assault after deliberating only 50 minutes in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court. Rulong and his attorney accepted the verdicts quietly.
Rulong, of Church Hill-Hubbard Road in Girard, admitted to police he drove past the tavern on Larchmont Avenue twice that night, firing both times into the two-story building on a busy Friday night. The two drives were 65 seconds apart.
Three tavern patrons suffered minor injuries as a result of at least eight gunshots hitting the building. None apparently suffered gunshot wounds, but all were hit with debris or broken glass. Prosecutors said the eight counts were for the eight shots fired.
When Rulong was arrested May 14 while fleeing from the armed robbery of the True North gas station on East Market Street in Howland, he said he fired into the tavern in anger over a confrontation he had earlier that night.
Rulong had drinks at the bar, then left with a beer in his hand and stumbled while trying to leap over a fence around the front patio. Rulong went home, got two guns and returned 70 minutes later in his white pickup truck, Assistant Prosecutor Chris Becker told jurors.
In closing arguments before jurors began deliberations, Rulong’s attorney, Mike Scala, admitted his client “did terrible things” that day, “but he did not commit these 16 crimes.”
Scala suggested Rulong only fired “up in the air” toward the building’s vacant second story and wasn’t guilty of trying to kill or badly injure someone.
But Becker disputed that characterization, saying forensic evidence showed three of the bullets hit the first-floor brick wall in front of the tavern, three hit the door and broke its glass, two hit on either side of the door frame and one hit the second floor.
Tavern patrons apparently believed they were being shot at because “every patron got down on the ground as low as they could get” when they heard the shots, Becker told jurors in his closing arguments.
Becker said the eight attempted murder counts and eight felonious assaults will merge for sentencing purposes, meaning Rulong can only be sentenced on the eight attempted murder charges, one count of aggravated robbery and many additional sentencing increases for committing the crimes with a gun.
The attempted murder and aggravated robbery charges carry a prison sentence of up to of 11 years each. The judge could also select a lower penalty.