YOUNGSTOWN — Jerome L. Tubbs, 24, of Mathews Road, was sentenced to eight to 10 1/2 years in prison Wednesday in the early Jan. 6 killing of Michael Kosarich II, 30, near the intersection of Market Street and Indianola Road in Boardman.

Tubbs pleaded guilty before Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Maureen Sweeney to voluntary manslaughter with a gun specification. The voluntary manslaughter was a reduction from the murder, felonious assault, tampering with evidence and improperly handling firearms in a motor vehicle charges in his indictment.

Tubbs received the sentence jointly recommended by the prosecution and defense, and he got credit for 265 days spent in the Mahoning County jail awaiting trial.

Kosarich was a Struthers High School graduate, auto mechanic and loved the outdoors, four-wheeling, dirt bikes, playing guitar and football, according to his obituary.

A Boardman police report states that officers responded to Market and Indianola at 2:30 a.m. Jan. 6 for calls about gunshots. Officers found a car at the intersection with Kosarich inside. He had been shot several times and was taken to St. Elizabeth Hospital, where he died. Boardman police said someone opened fire on his vehicle. Tubbs, who also had a Potomac Avenue address in Youngstown, was arrested Feb. 16 in the case.

Kyle Hilles, county assistant prosecutor, said the incident involved a “car chase” in Boardman that resulted in the victim and the defendant pulling into a parking lot on Market Street beside each other. Tubbs fired a gun into the victim’s car, but there was no evidence that the victim had a gun, Hilles said.

There was surveillance video showing the chase and the cars in the parking lot, but it did not show whether anyone threatened anyone else with a gun, Hilles said.

Kosarch’s sister, Angela Newman, gave a victim impact statement, saying she was not satisfied with the sentence the parties agreed to for Stubbs, but she was satisfied with the work the prosecutor’s office put into the case.

“It was senseless, all of it,” she said. “The defendant had the choice to drive away. The defendant had so many other options, but instead he made the decision to pursue my brother and end his life.”

She said that because of her brother’s death, her “family is missing an essential piece of our puzzle.”

Aaron Meikle, Tubbs’ attorney, said he and his client were ready to take the case to trial, there was a “good self defense claim, and that is the reason” for the murder charge being reduced to manslaughter.

Meikle said Tubbs was “punched, and things got out of hand. He pursued a car. When that car stopped in a parking lot, both the defendant and the person in (the defendant’s) car thought the victim had a gun. The defendant then opened fire.”

Tubbs apologized to the victim’s family, saying the victim “just came out of nowhere.” Tubbs said he has no other criminal record.