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WARREN -- A man accused of a home invasion burglary in Champion and more charges of violence in Mahoning County will be defending himself in both cases.
Michael A. Rivers, 38, of Potomac Avenue, Youngstown, appeared before Trumbull County Common Pleas Court Judge W. Wyatt McKay on Wednesday, asking to defend himself and to fire his public defender.
Under the judge's questioning, Rivers said he was not happy with his defense team and the way his case was going, with no trial scheduled yet. McKay immediately scheduled a June 6 trial on the burglary charge. But Rivers remained steadfast in his request, saying he was allowed to defend himself for his Mahoning County case.
McKay relented, reading a litany of rights the defendant would have with counsel. Rivers waived all those rights.
Assistant Prosecutor Gabriel Wildman offered the defendant a plea deal in which Rivers would serve 16 to 21 years in prison in exchange for guilty pleas to the first-degree burglary felony and two counts of having weapons under restrictions. The burglary count carried a gun specification that calls for mandatory three years in prison.
Rivers laughed at the offer, which Wildman said he interpreted as rejecting it.
"This defendant is a violent man with a lengthy criminal history," Wildman said. "Like all defendants -- whether represented by counsel or not -- we will make sure he gets a fair trial."
Wildman asked the judge to protect the witnesses, who are some of the same victims in the Mahoning County assault case.
"I think that is his game here, to question these people," Wildman said in seeking maybe a video-type arrangement for questioning at trial.
Meanwhile, McKay ordered Rivers held without bond, while in Mahoning County, Rivers is being held pending the posting of a $37,500 bond. Rivers is currently being incarcerated in the Mahoning County lockup.
Members of the U.S. Marshals Northern Ohio Fugitive Task Force found Rivers in late November 2021 at a trailer park in North Jackson.
CASE FILES
In the Mahoning County case, Rivers is accused of attacking two women about 5:50 a.m. May 4, 2021, in a driveway in the 4600 block of Burkey Road in Austintown. Reports said one woman was identified as Rivers' ex-girlfriend and was in the driver's seat of the car. Another woman, the mother of Rivers' children, was a passenger.
According to reports, Rivers allegedly hit the driver in the back of the head several times. The report said the man was upset because the two women were together.
As the fight continued, one of the women pulled a .380-caliber seminautomatic pistol, that Rivers managed to get hold of. He took the gun and fled, the report states, jumping a fence. Police later found the holster for the gun, but not the firearm.
In the case before Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge Anthony Donofrio, Rivers is charged with aggravated robbery, two counts of felonious assault, having weapons under restriction and grand theft. A pretrial hearing before Donofrio is set for April 6.
In the Trumbull County case, Rivers is accused of breaking into a Champion home on March 26, 2020, and holding a woman at gunpoint with two weapons in the bedroom of her Shafer Road home.
Champion and Bazetta officers responded and the woman said she woke up after hearing something inside her home and found the man, identified as her ex-boyfriend, standing over her waving two handguns around yelling "Now what?" The woman told officers that one of the guns was hers that was in a jacket pocket. He must have grabbed it while she was asleep, the report states.
The woman and her child were escorted out of the house and officers searched the house for the suspect. Rivers was found hiding up against the wall in a closet in another bedroom, the one where the child had been sleeping. The man was taken to the ground by officers and searched. Police found on him a 19mm loaded firearm. The firearm that belonged to the woman was a handgun.
Officers could not find any forced entry, and the woman was unsure how the man got into the residence since he didn't have a key, the report states.
gvogrin@tribtoday.com