Staff photo / Ed Runyan Trenton Nored, left, is shown during his plea and sentencing hearing Thursday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court alongside his attorney, Lou DeFabio.

YOUNGSTOWN — An assistant county prosecutor told Judge John Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that the behavior of a Coitsville Township police officer, when the officer chased a man on a moped Aug. 6, 2020, is a reason for the type of plea agreement the man received this week.

Assistant Prosecutor Nick Brevetta told The Vindicator he would not discuss the specifics of the officer’s behavior, but a letter from Youngstown Police Department internal affairs officer Brian Butler sheds some light on it.

The Aug. 19, 2020, letter to Coitsville Township police Chief Michael Morris states that Coitsville officer Ryan Young chased suspect Trenton Nored the “wrong way on I-680” in Youngstown after Nored allegedly committed a misdemeanor traffic violation in Coitsville Township.

Nored later crashed the moped he was driving on Youngstown’s South Side and had an “accidental discharge from a pistol, which was in his pocket,” Butler wrote.

Butler wrote that the reason he viewed the discharge to be accidental is that Youngstown officers at the crash scene saw a hole in Nored’s pants consistent with an accidental discharge.

When asked about that Friday, Morris said he does not believe Young was traveling the wrong way on Interstate 680, and his department concluded later that it could not prove that Nored had tried to shoot at his officer.

ORIGINAL CHARGES

Coitsville police charged Nored in Campbell Municipal Court with felonious assault and other charges and the charges were bound over to a Mahoning County grand jury Aug. 14, 2020.

The grand jury indicted Nored Sept. 10 on six felony charges, but refused to indict him on felonious assault. The charges as indicted could have produced a prison sentence of about 15 years if convicted.

Butler stated that his letter to Morris was intended to “pass this information onto you so you are aware of it,” that the information had come from Youngstown officers on the scene and had “not been verified.”

On Thursday, Durkin sentenced Nored, 30, of East Philadelphia Avenue to one year of probation and no incarceration after Nored pleaded guilty to one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

The judge dismissed the five other felony charges Nored faced. They were failure to comply with the orders of a police officer, carrying a concealed weapon, resisting arrest, obstructing official business and discharging firearms on or near prohibited premises.

‘OUTRAGEOUS’

Attached to Butler’s letter to Morris was an Aug. 13, 2020, letter from Youngstown patrolman Steve Gibson regarding a different chase — this one involving an SUV on Aug. 13 that Morris said Young carried out.

Young stated in a letter to Morris obtained by The Vindicator that Young discontinued the Aug. 13 chase for safety reasons. But Gibson’s letter called the Aug. 13 chase an “outrageous incident.”

The SUV Young had been chasing was unable to navigate a curve on U.S. Route 422 and “jumped the center island and hit another vehicle head on at very high speed,” Gibson wrote. The crash caused injuries to the occupants of both vehicles.

Gibson stated that he learned the following “alarming” information that night: If a Coitsville Township officer needs guidance from a supervisor on high-risk calls such as a pursuit, he or she must call a supervisor on a cellphone “while driving,” Gibson’s letter states.

Youngs’s undated letter to Morris states that he ended the Aug. 13 pursuit while still in Coitsville Township’s jurisdiction because of the speed of the vehicle and for safety reasons. Young stated that Gibson approached him at the scene of the crash and swore at him.

On Aug. 15, Young pulled up beside Gibson’s cruiser. Gibson told Young how extremely unhappy Gibson was with Young regarding the Aug. 13 pursuit, Young’s letter stated. Young said he told Gibson he was “within my department’s pursuit policy,” but Gibson told Young to “stay the (expletive) out of Youngstown.”

On Aug. 25, Morris wrote a letter to Butler stating that the Coitville Police Department wanted to file a complaint against Gibson for the way Gibson treated Young Aug. 15, two days after the second chase.

Butler told The Vindicator neither Young nor the Coitsville Police Department followed through with a formal complaint against Morris. Butler said he cannot comment on another department’s actions, but chasing a vehicle the wrong way on a highway “would be a violation of our pursuit policy.”

Morris confirmed in an interview that his department did not pursue the complaint against Gibson. He said he does not believe there is a problem with the staffing level of his department.

THE CHASE

Morris said Young was justified in chasing the man on the moped because the driver “tried to strike the cruiser” with the moped. On a felony offense such as that, Young was within policy in conducting a chase, Morris said.

On the SUV chase, Young followed policy that allows an officer to pursue for a mile to try to obtain a license plate number “and then cut it off. He cut it off before a mile.”

Morris said Young, who has also worked for the Campbell Police Department, was promoted to sergeant Sept. 20, 2020.

Morris told The Vindicator shortly after the Nored incident that the chase began when an officer tried to pull Nored over for driving left of center. Nored fled at low speed into the South Side of Youngstown, and the moped crashed around 3 a.m. near East Indianola Avenue and Rush Boulevard on the South Side of Youngstown.

During Nored’s plea and sentencing hearing Thursday, Brevetta and defense attorney Lou DeFabio mentioned that the behavior of the Coitsville officer was a reason Nored was allowed to plead guilty to just one of his six charges.

Brevetta told Durkin the Youngstown Police Department did some investigating into the incident after assisting Coitsville in the case. Brevetta said he read a report the Youngstown Police Department wrote, and it affected the sentence prosecutors recommended.

Brevetta said he felt the reduced charges and non-prison sentence were fair “considering the behavior of the defendant and the Coitsville Police Department.”

DeFabio said of the incident: “My client had a duty to stop. And at the end of the day, he did have a firearm on him.”

But initial reports that Nored fired his handgun at the Coitsville officer are “blatantly untrue,” DeFabio said.

The judge said after looking over materials Brevetta provided to him from the Youngstown Police Department, he understood why Brevetta recommended a severe reduction in the charges.

When Morris was asked about the plea and sentence Nored received, he said: “It is what it is.”

erunyan@vindy.com