Staff photo / Dan Pompili ... Andre McCoy, left, stands with his attorney, Walter Madison, on Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. McCoy accepted a plea agreement in the 2020 shooting death of 4-year-old Rowan Sweeney. in Struthers. McCoy, 22, pleaded guilty Tuesday to murder, a reduced charge.

YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge Anthony D’Apolito has accepted terms of a plea agreement between the state of Ohio and Andre McCoy, one of three men charged in the 2020 shooting death of 4-year-old Rowan Sweeney in Struthers.

In exchange for the guilty plea, the possibility of the death penalty for McCoy is off the table.

McCoy, 22, pleaded guilty Tuesday to murder, a reduced charge from the original count of aggravated murder listed on a March 2021 indictment. Prosecutors dropped all specifications attached to that count, including felony murder and firearms specifications, and murder of a victim under the age of 13.

The state also dropped three other counts of aggravated murder, three counts of attempted murder, four counts of felonious assault, one count of aggravated burglary, one count of aggravated robbery, and a count of conspiracy, as well as all specifications associated with those charges.

D’Apolito said a sentencing hearing will be set for a later date, but the terms of the plea agreement call for a sentence of 15 years to life in prison. If McCoy had been convicted at trial on the charges listed in the original indictment, he could have faced the death penalty.

McCoy was one of several adults in the house when the other men accused in the murder, Kimonie Bryant and Brandon Crump, allegedly entered and opened fire, injuring the adults and killing Rowan.

McCoy sustained severe injuries in the incident, but eventually recovered well enough to flee from authorities. He was a fugitive until U.S. marshals located and arrested him in January at a home on Park Hill Drive in Youngstown.

In light of McCoy’s injuries, D’Apolito sought to ensure that McCoy fully understood the plea and entered into it of his own free will. D’Apolito questioned McCoy thoroughly about whether he understood the terms of the plea agreement and the rights he was surrendering by not going to trial.

Prosecutors had compiled countless documents, videos, and phone records linking McCoy to the crime, in addition to interview and investigation notes from law enforcement officers. In February, they provided McCoy’s attorney, Walter Madison, with an 11-page list of 252 documents that could have been used as evidence, along with three 1-terabyte storage devices full of evidence against McCoy.

Bryant’s trial is set to begin in September, and Crump’s in October.

dpompili@vindy.com