Staff photo / Ed Runyan .... Farren J. McClendon, 45, is seen at his sentencing Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court with his attorney, Stanley Booker.

YOUNGSTOWN — Janarvis L. Roberts turned the basement of his home on Cambridge Avenue on the South Side “into a torture chamber,” Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Joe Maxin said Wednesday,

Roberts, 28, and co-defendant Farren J. McClendon, 45, had kidnapped a woman off the street at gunpoint on East Judson Avenue, Maxin said.

“In that torture chamber, Roberts repeatedly beat (the woman). He duct-taped her to a pole in the basement and repeatedly burned her with the superheated blade of a machete,” Maxin said during the sentencing hearing for the two defendants.

Maxin said when McClendon “had had enough of the torture of (the woman), he covered her head with a bath towel, covering her eyes and took her by vehicle and dumped her on the East Side in a wooded area known as Sharon Line.”

Maxin said the woman wandered out of the woods, where a concerned citizen called 911. Police found her at a home in the 2000 block of Warwick Avenue with severe wounds.

The woman had been badly burned in several places on her body, including her arm, hand and leg. She had a bruised eye area and back, Maxin said.

Maxin gave Judge John Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court photos of the woman’s injuries before he handed down the sentences for McClendon and Roberts.

McClendon received a five-year prison sentence and got credit for 775 days already served in the Mahoning County jail — more than two years — awaiting trial. McClendon pleaded guilty last month to abduction and having weapons while not allowed.

The sentence will be served at the same time as a federal sentence of 32 months that McClendon received for a related federal case that involved possessing weapons and ammunition. Those charges stemmed from items found in McClendon’s home on East Judson Avenue when investigators searched the home in relation to the the torture case.

An affidavit filed October 2021 in Youngstown Municipal Court stated that Roberts committed the assaults on the woman as McClendon watched. Maxin said Roberts did, however, play a role in the woman’s abduction and was indicted on similar charges as Roberts.

Roberts was sentenced to 8 to 10 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty last month to all of the charges in his indictment — kidnapping and felonious assault, both with gun specifications.

The Youngstown Police Department was joined by the FBI and SWAT teams when they used search warrants to investigate the homes of McClendon and Roberts on Sept. 30, 2021.

Youngstown police Capt. Jason Simon at the time said the teams were in place because of the “serious nature of the crime,” but he would not say what type of crime.