YOUNGSTOWN — George Panno of Struthers was sentenced to two years in prison after being convicted of cruelty to a companion animal with a gun specification.

Panno, 29, shot his girlfriend’s dog in a wooded area last April.

He had reached a plea agreement in January with prosecutors before closing arguments in his four-day trial. Mahoning Common Pleas Court Judge Anthony Donofrio sentenced him according to the terms of the agreement.

The plea headed off jury deliberations.

The companion animal conviction carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison. Panno also faced a gun specification that prosecutors reduced from three additional years to one additional year in prison.

Testimony during the trial indicated that Panno had gone to a rural area along Bailey Road in Ellsworth Township in the evening of April 8, 2022. He walked from his car with his girlfriend’s dog, Diesel, into the woods.

A woman living across the street saw Panno and the dog and heard three gunshots come from the woods, then saw Panno return from the woods without the dog. She called 911.

Sgt. Jeff Saluga with the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office responded in time to see Panno coming out of the woods. Panno had left the scene after shooting the dog and then returned a short time later.

Saluga was wearing a body camera that captured his interactions with Panno up to the point where officers put Panno in the back of a cruiser, while Saluga and at least one other officer went into the woods and found the dog. It was under large branches and two garbage bags. It was dead with three gunshot wounds, none in the dog’s head.

The body camera captured conversations among Saluga, Panno and two humane agents with Animal Charity of Ohio in Boardman as they quizzed him on how the dog ended up shot to death. Panno initially told them he had chased the dog in the woods — but eventually admitted he had brought the dog there to “get rid of it.”

PRIOR CONVICTION

Panno, who was detained in the Mahoning County jail during the trial, had earlier been sentenced in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court to three to 4 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to felonious assault, kidnapping, two counts of endangering children and domestic violence.

Those charges came from a crime that took place April 22 last year in the Royal Mall apartments in Niles, when Panno assaulted a woman.

A Niles police report states that a man was seen punching the woman as he dragged her by the hair back into the apartment. The victim ran outside once again and the man began banging her head on the concrete floor, according to the report.

When police arrived at the apartment complex, Panno was seen driving a white Nissan Ultima from the property. After blocking the vehicle with a police vehicle, officer Todd Mobley drew his weapon and ordered the driver out.

Mobley stated in the report: “The suspect appeared to have blood on his hands and clothing as he complied and exited his vehicle and was ordered to the ground.”

The assault victim told officers that Panno bit her in the right ear. She had blood running down the side of her face.

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