Magistrate puts teen in custody for playing basketball

YOUNGSTOWN — A Mahoning County Juvenile Court magistrate Thursday ordered a 16-year-old who was on house arrest after being charged with rape to be detained.

The order came after the teen was spotted playing for East High School in a basketball game earlier this week.

The teen’s attorney, John Shultz, told Magistrate Karen Melone that his client has been on house arrest since December and had never once broken the terms of the house arrest. Shultz also said whenever the teen went anywhere with his mother, they always checked to make sure the teen was allowed to go and approval was always given. That was confirmed by the person in charge of his monitoring.

Shultz said his client thought that coaches had worked it out for him to be allowed to play in the game. His client has never been in trouble before, Shultz added.

Shultz said the public perception of his client is a bad one because people reacted to the story in the media without knowing any of the facts about his client.

“It’s very aggravating,” Shultz said.

Read more in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.