Staff file photo ... Steve Kent, former Austintown trustee and Poland Township police officer, is handcuffed after his conviction for tampering with evidence.

AUSTINTOWN — The trial of former township trustee Steve Kent began in earnest Aug. 7 in the courtroom of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge John M. Durkin.

Exactly one week later, on Aug. 14, he left the courtroom a convicted felon. A day later, he was deemed incompetent under Ohio law to remain in his seat as an Austintown Township trustee and was replaced in an emergency session.

On Sept. 20, having been found guilty of tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony, Kent was sentenced to a year in prison and taken into custody. Just two weeks later, though, an appellate court ordered Kent be released from Mahoning County jail while he appeals his conviction. Kent remains free on a $12,500 surety bond.

Kent was indicted April 7, 2022, on three charges of sexual battery and one count of tampering with evidence, all third-degree felonies.

The charges stemmed from allegations that Kent had an illicit sexual relationship with a Poland Seminary High School student while working as a Poland Township police officer and as the Poland Local School District’s school resource officer.

The young woman, 17 at the time of the alleged offenses, testified that Kent forced her on three occasions in 2021 to perform oral sex while she sat with him in his truck.

However, defense attorney John Juhasz effectively sowed doubt in jurors’ minds about her testimony, and state attorneys Kara Keating and Denise Salerno ultimately could not convince them to convict Kent on those charges.

Where they did succeed was in proving that Kent knew the girl’s allegations would lead to an investigation and so he performed a factory reset on his phone to eliminate any possible evidence of his relationship with her.

During the trial, both Kent and the girl, now 20, testified about the relationship between them. Prosecutors established that the relationship began in 2020 when the girl expressed her sympathy to Kent over the November 2018 death of his son in a car crash. The girl told the court that her mother had died of breast cancer when she was 7, and she also struggled with grief.

She and Kent both testified that the girl would contact him on social media and slip out of classes to come talk to him while he patrolled the school. Eventually, they began meeting outside of school, at parking lots in Boardman and Poland, often while Kent was on duty. The girl said Kent would contact her or would show up, having used the Life360 app to track her whereabouts. Kent said it was the girl who stalked him.

She told the court that Kent began making comments about her body and touching her in ways that made her uncomfortable, and that the behavior escalated on or around “Black Friday” in 2020, when he allegedly kissed and fondled her.

She said he first coerced her to perform oral sex in April 2021 in a parking lot in Boardman. She said he showed her a gun and she felt she had no choice. She said two more such incidents occurred in May of that year, in parking areas around the Southern Park Mall.

After the girl’s testimony, prosecutors called Poland parent Carla Bobbey to the stand. Bobbey testified that she bumped into the girl by chance at Poland Nutrition in late May 2021, and the girl mentioned some things that made Bobbey suspicious of Kent. She said she told him to leave the girl alone or she would report him to the school principal and the girl’s father.

Specifically, the girl had knowledge of a picture of Bobbey and Kent together at a Cleveland baseball game on May 8 of that year. Kent’s daughter Christina had discovered it on his phone and brought it to his wife’s attention. Christina Kent testified during the trial that the girl had been a friend to her after she discovered her father’s affair with Bobbey.

The more Bobbey pondered the girl’s knowledge of the photo, the more suspicious she became. Bobbey said she met with her again at Poland Nutrition on June 5, where the girl told Bobbey of the alleged sex acts. That night, Bobbey said, she confronted Kent via Facetime and told him that she intended to report him the next day, which she did.

Kent was called into the police station that following afternoon for questioning about the accusations, where he surrendered his phone. Ultimately, he was fired from his job as a police officer. Erica Moore, an Ohio BCI agent who specializes in computer forensics, told the court that data revealed Kent performed a factory reset on his phone at 12:54 p.m. on June 6.

Kent told the court he did it to protect his daughter from seeing any more of the details about his affair.

Jurors did not buy it. On Aug. 14, after less than one hour of deliberating, the jury acquitted Kent of the sexual battery charges but convicted him of tampering with evidence.

The following day, Mahoning County Prosecutor Gina DeGenova informed Austintown trustees Monica Deavers and Robert Santos, and Township Administrator Mark D’Apolito that the conviction rendered Kent unfit under Ohio Revised Code to maintain his seat on the board of trustees. Kent was elected in 2019.

A day after Kent was ousted, Deavers and Santos appointed former township administrator Atty. Mike Dockry to serve out the remainder of Kent’s term. Dockry is ceding the seat to newly-elected trustee Bruce Shepas.

On Sept. 20, Durkin sentenced Kent to one year in prison. Kent filed a motion the next day, asking Durkin to stay the sentence while he appealed the conviction. Early the following week, Durkin denied the motion.

But on Oct. 3, Ohio’s 7th District Court of Appeals ordered Kent released pending his appeal. The Ohio Attorney General’s Office said Kent’s appeal remains in process.