Staff photo / Ed Runyan
Elsa Rodriguez, left, and her attorney, Brian Tareshawty, appear at her sentencing hearing Wednesday. She was convicted of two counts of felony assault for throwing a phone charger at a police officer, slapping him in the face and spiting on him.

YOUNGSTOWN — Elsa Rodriguez, 34, was sentenced to 90 days in the Mahoning County jail Wednesday after pleading guilty earlier to two counts of felony assault and one count of resisting arrest for a March 8 incident in which she assaulted police officers.

Her attorney, Brian Tareshawty, told Judge Anthony D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that Rodriguez was in Youngstown to help her sister care for her ailing mother, who died about a month later. While in Youngstown, Rodriguez slipped on snow and broke her ankle and tore a tendon in her elbow.

Rodgriguez has an 8-year-old child in Puerto Rico, where Rodriguez lives, and she needs to return to Puerto Rico because the country is in the midst of a hurricane, Tareshawty said. She is a nurse, Tareshawty noted.

She was using prescription OxyContin for her injuries but also drinking alcohol and did not realize how that would affect her the night she was arrested, Tareshawty said.

Officers handled the situation correctly, and Rodriguez told her sister to let police into the house, but her sister would not, Tareshawty said. Rodriguez resisted officers’ attempts to handcuff her because of the pain she was experiencing in her ankle and elbow, Tareshawty said. He said she was not thinking “with a clear mind.”

Steve Maszczak, assistant county prosecutor, said Youngstown police were sent to a home in the first block of South Maryland Avenue late that night for reports of gunshots being fired and heard sounds coming from the house.

They were not granted permission to enter, but they knocked the door down to check to see if anyone was injured. Inside the house, Rodriguez threw a phone charger at a Youngstown officer, and the officer blocked it.

She slapped and spit on the officer, then spit on the face of another officer and kicked a third officer, according to a Youngstown police report. She was handcuffed.

Rodriguez had an earlier, unrelated injury, so before she was taken to jail, she was taken to St. Elizabeth Hospital, but she also fought with officers and ambulance personnel in the ambulance, the police report states.

The report noted that officers did not find any bullet shell casings at the scene, and no one was arrested for having a firearm. Later at the hospital, Youngstown police were advised that Rodriguez also tried to assault medical staff.

Because Rodriguez was “”continuously trying to kick medical staff with both legs,” she was given medication to calm her down, and medical staff strapped her legs down, the report states.

Prosecutors recommended that Rodriguez be sentenced to an unspecified period of incarceration in the Mahoning County jail.

Maszczak said that from viewing a video, it was apparent that Rodriguez was intoxicated during the incidents. He said that does not excuse Rodriguez’s behavior. He said in speaking with the officer involved, he and the officer felt it is important that the public know they cannot engage in that type of behavior with police officers and medical personnel.

Before announcing Rodriguez’s sentence, Judge D’Apolito told Rodriguez he finds it “problematic” that Rodriguez not only assaulted officers, but she is a nurse and she assaulted a nurse and fought with officers and ambulance personnel in an ambulance.

First responders such as police officers know when they respond to a call for shots fired, they could be confronted with danger, but they “don’t deserve” to also be confronted by citizens trying to assault them, the judge said.

“It would be a bad message for me as a judge not to protect them,” he said of police officers.

The judge said he feels bad that Rodriguez’s child is in Puerto Rico without her and that Rodriguez’s mother died recently, “But add all of those up, and they do not outweigh the actions you took, the harm that you caused and the message that needs to be sent.”

Rodriguez could have gotten as much as three years in prison on the two fourth-degree felonies.