Teen hoops player ordered detained on violation

YOUNGSTOWN

A Mahoning County Juvenile Court magistrate today 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 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.

Someone took a picture of the teen’s ankle bracelet and alerted local media that he was playing, and he was picked up for a violation of his house arrest. According to the terms of his house arrest he is only allowed to go to school.

Magistrate Melone said, however, that while the teen probably did not mean to violate his house arrest and thought he was allowed to take part in the game, he had a responsibility to be 100 percent sure. For that reason, she said, she decided he should be in detention.

The teen’s trial is to begin in March. Magistrate Melone said Shultz can file a motion with the trial judge if he wants to object to her decision.