YOUNGSTOWN — The boy, now 15, captured at the Canfield Fair on Sept. 3 after he threw a gun under a vehicle shortly after gunfire was heard nearby faced sentencing Wednesday in Mahoning County Juvenile Court.

But when Judge Theresa Dellick learned how poorly the boy had done while free from detention the past two months, everything changed.

Rachel Shiley, intake coordinator for juvenile court, advised the judge that the boy had not done as well in school as hoped. He moved without telling the court where he had gone. And his electronic monitoring bracelet had not been working for “a number of weeks.” He also was a “no show” for an appointment at the court.

“We have been worried about his whereabouts,” Shiley said.

“He has maybe one good day per week,” Shiley said of his schooling.

The judge looked at the youth and said: “This is your best?” She became tense, asking, “He hasn’t been following electronic monitoring?”

Then she told Assistant Prosecutor Anisa Modarelli, the boy and his mother, and the boy’s attorney, Brian Tareshawty, that she she was ending the hearing.

“I’m done,” she said, appearing to be ready to get up from the bench.

But the boy’s mother interjected, “I realize it’s been a topsy-turvy situation.” Then she said her son has not been getting his “medication,” that she is a single mom with four other children and has been “working 16-hour days” as a prison corrections officer.

“I know you are fed up in the situation,” the mother told the judge, but she asked for “more time” and asked that her son not be sent to an Ohio Department of Youth Services facility, which are frequently referred to as juvenile prisons.

The judge listened to the boy’s mother but replied, “Nobody called Mrs. Shiley. We had no calls.”

She told the boy, “You can get your attitude right. Your mom is working hard.”

His mother told him, “Listen, get it together.”

A short time later, a deputy took the boy into custody and led him from the courtroom. He had his head down, appearing to mumble his dissatisfaction that he was going to be held in detention again.

PLEADED TRUE

The boy had pleaded “true,” the juvenile equivalent to guilty, in juvenile court on Nov. 1 to one low-level felony count each of aggravated riot and inducing panic and five misdemeanor offenses — aggravated trespass, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, carrying a concealed weapon and tampering with evidence.

He originally was scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 30, but it too was postponed.

Before the bad report on the boy’s conduct since leaving detention, Tareshawty told the judge the boy “understands he was part of ruining this year’s fair” Sept. 3. But the gun he had was “not loaded.”

Modarelli explained later that the judge decided to have the boy sent back to juvenile detention because of his noncompliance with the court’s rules. He will return to court at a later time for his sentencing. But as of Wednesday, no new sentencing date had been set.

FAIR MAYHEM

The boy spent 60 days in the detention center after his arrest at the fair.

Body-camera video from a Canfield police officer showed the officer seeing the boy running near the camping area near Gate C of the fairgrounds and chasing him on foot, yelling for the boy to “get on the ground,” which the boy did.

Police said they recovered a gun they saw the boy throw under a vehicle. It also happened near where gunshots were fired in a parking lot a short time earlier.

A woman told Canfield officers that her Dodge Durango located just outside of Gate C in the parking lot had been hit by a bullet. It entered the car in the rear license plate and rested at the front of the windshield, according to a Canfield police report.

That episode followed incidents that began about a half-hour earlier about 9:30 p.m. with youths causing mayhem and fighting in another part of the fairgrounds. Several young people were charged in those incidents. The fair was disrupted that evening, but it reopened the next day.

Modarelli told a juvenile court magistrate earlier that the gun the boy had did not match the gun that hit the Durango in the parking lot.

Tareshawty said the boy had “never been in trouble” before the fair incident.

erunyan@vindy.com