Staff photos / Ed Runyan Sergio F. Gonzalez III, 23, of Garland Avenue listens as he’s being told he’s convicted of two counts of rape Thursday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. At left is his attorney, Aaron Meikle.

YOUNGSTOWN — Sergio F. Gonzalez III of Garland Avenue showed no outward reaction as Judge John Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court read guilty verdicts Thursday to two counts of rape.

Gonzalez was handcuffed and taken back to the Mahoning County jail, where he will await sentencing. He will get a life prison sentence with parole eligibility after 10 years unless Judge Durkin runs the two sentences together, in which case Gonzalez would get 20 years to life in prison.

The jury deliberated a short time late Wednesday and throughout the morning Thursday before announcing it had reached a verdict.

The victim was under 13 when Gonzalez raped her in late 2017 and early 2018 when Gonzalez was 17 years old. The victim testified at the trial, describing the first offense happening late New Year’s Eve or early the next morning and the second offense happening several months later.

She testified that the first time, she was sleeping in the bedroom of a home where she visited at times when Gonzalez walked into her room, causing her to wake up. She knew him, and nothing had ever happened between them before, she said.

He said he wanted to show her something in another room. She went there, and he asked her if she wanted to smoke marijuana.

She knew what it was but wasn’t sure what effect it would have. He blew the smoke into her face. Then he asked her to play a party game. Eventually, he asked her to sit on his lap. “He was just very persistent on me getting closer to him,” she said. He asked for sex, and she said no. “He kept persisting,” she said. That is when he “made me” engage in a sex act, she said. There were two other children in the room at the time asleep, she said.

During a second visit to the home several months later, she said Gonzalez asked her to come into his room, which she did. He asked her for sex again and she didn’t want to.

The girl said she told Gonzalez to ask his girlfriend. That’s when the second encounter happened, she said.

During a counseling session two years later with Tamara LeFlore, a Red Zone counselor in Youngstown City Schools, who she had been talking to for several weeks, the girl told LeFlore about the episodes involving Gonzalez, she testified.

Gonzalez testified on Wednesday that the girl approached him and asked him for marijuana and a cellphone. He said she was desperate for access to a phone after her mother had taken hers away, stating “She said she would do anything for a phone and some weed.”

Gonzalez said he told her she did not have to do anything, and while he refused to give her marijuana he did go looking for a phone for her to use, but could not find it.

During his closing arguments, Aaron Meikle, Gonzalez’s attorney questioned the girl’s testimony. He also said her memories of how, where and particulars of the story, are inconsistent.

He also said it does not make sense that she would approach Gonzalez, alone, in his room on the day of the second incident.

“She wants us to believe she would voluntarily go into the room of the person she says sexually assaulted her, in the room where she says she was sexually assaulted?” he said. “This story does not add up. This case is full of doubt.”

Kevin Day, the assistant prosecutor handling the case, said in closing arguments that the girl has testified about the incident multiple times — to her school counselor, her mother, the Akron Children’s Hospital Child Advocacy Center interviewer, in a previous court testimony, and again Tuesday in Durkin’s court.

“She has always been consistent about the details that matter,” he said.

The Gonzalez case was unusual in that Gonzalez was 17 at the time he committed the two rapes. Gonzalez was indicted by the adult-level common pleas court only after the 7th District Court of Appeals ordered the case bound over to adult court.

Judge Theresa Dellick of Mahoning County Juvenile Court initially declined to transfer the case to adult court in June 2021.

She stated Gonzalez was amenable to rehabilitation in the juvenile court system.

She also stated that the timing of the filing of the rape charges against Gonzalez just before he turned 20 “occurred to the detriment of” Gonzalez and the alleged victim. The judge stated that this happened “due to no action of (Gonzalez’s) own.”

But the prosecutor’s office appealed June 18, 2021, arguing that because the suspect would be turning 21 within two months of Dellick’s ruling, that left only two months for the juvenile court and staff at the Martin P. Joyce Juvenile Justice Center to rehabilitate Gonzalez before he would be released.

The April 2022 appeals court ruling, written by judges David D’Apolito, Gene Donofrio and Carol Ann Robb, found that “two months provides insufficient time to rehabilitate (Gonzalez).”

The ruling stated that “the (judge) observed that the psychological report did not disclose any ‘deviant behavior.’ The juvenile court’s reliance on the foregoing observation completely ignores the alleged crimes, despite the juvenile court’s finding that probable cause (of the suspect committing the crimes) exists based on” the alleged victim’s testimony at a hearing.

The appeals court ruling ordered Dellick to transfer the case to adult court, which she did in an April 4, 2022, judgment entry, which cited the appeals ruling. Gonzalez was indicted the following month, but he could not be located until Canfield police arrested him after observing a minor traffic violation June 12.