YOUNGSTOWN — The Seventh District Court of Appeals has reversed a decision by a Mahoning County Common Pleas Court judge that allowed a man to rescind his guilty plea in a case in which he took a van parked in a gas station parking lot, then realized there were several sleeping children in the back.

Unless appealed again, the ruling means that Abraham I. Jimenez-Zenquiz, 25, will continue to serve his original prison sentence, which expires in May of 2028.

Jimenez-Zenquiz, formerly of Youngstown, was sentenced to 5 to 7 1/2 years in prison in February 2024 after pleading guilty to one count of kidnapping and one count of grand theft in a Nov. 5, 2022, incident that began at the Circle K on Mahoning Avenue on the West Side. Youngstown police recovered the children a short time later.

Judge Anthony Donofrio sentenced Jimenez-Zenquiz in March 2023, and attorney Mark Lavelle, a different attorney than the one Jimenez-Zenquiz had during his plea and sentencing, filed a motion with Judge Donofrio to withdraw Jimenez-Zenquiz’s guilty plea in February 2024.

Prosecutors argued against it, but Judge Anthony Donofrio ruled in favor of letting Jimenez-Zenquiz rescind his guilty plea in October 2024. He ordered that the case be set for a pretrial for later in the month. But Mahoning County prosecutors appealed the judge’s decision to the 7th District Court of Appeals, which put a halt to any further proceedings until the appeals court ruled. It issued its ruling last month.

According to police reports and the appeals ruling, a father picked up his three children, ages 10, 9 and four from their mother’s home in Pittsburgh Nov. 5, 2022, and was en-route to his home in the Youngstown area in a passenger van owned by his employer, a transportation and limousine company, when he stopped at the Circle K.

The father’s friend was along on the trip. The father went into the store to get breakfast for everyone, leaving his friend in the van. They left the van running because the children were asleep. At some point, however, the friend got out of the van to speak to someone outside of the store. He looked inside the store at the father, who was asking the friend what type of drink he wanted. The friend leaned his head inside the store to tell him what kind. When he turned around, the van was gone, according to the appeals ruling.

The father called the kids’ mom, and she was able to track the location of the van through the children’s cell phone. The father provided the information to the police. A nearby Good Samaritan saw the incident and offered assistance, driving the father and his friend to that location. When the father got there, he saw Jimenez-Zenquiz walking with the children through an open field near a residential area but in a remote area at the end of a street.

Police arrived at the location at the same time as the father. The children ran to their father while police detained Jimenez-Zenquiz. The children were OK. At first, Jimenez-Zenquiz denied that he was in the van, but each child said Jimenez-Zenquiz had been in the van and that Jimenez-Zenquiz had been driving, then woke them up and made them exit the van, the ruling states.

The children said Jimenez-Zenquiz encouraged them to lie and say that someone else had been driving the van. Jimenez-Zenquiz was later indicted on three counts of kidnapping and and one count of theft of a motor vehicle.

In Lavelle’s motion to withdraw Jimenez-Zenquiz’s guilty plea, Lavelle argued Jimenez-Zenquiz had a “viable defense that his attorney at the time of the plea failed to pursue.” Lavelle argued that Jimenez-Zenquiz did not know that the children were in the van when he took it. And after he realized it, he drove to his aunt’s house so he could call police to alert them to what happened.

The appeals ruling noted that Lavelle did not provide affidavits or other evidence to “corroborate this story, nor did he file an affidavit himself himself attesting to these facts, which are notably different from those he told police at the time of the incident.”

The defense filed a motion to have a transcript of Jimenez-Zenquiz’s preliminary hearing in Youngstown Municipal Court prepared, and Judge Donofrio approved the request. However, the transcript was not filed until about six weeks after Donofrio approved Jimenez-Zenquiz’s motion to withdraw his plea, the ruling noted.

“Thus, while the transcript was used to develop the factual background in this appeal it may not have been relied on by (Donofrio) when (he) rendered (his) decision” to allow Jimenez-Zenquiz to withdraw his guilty plea, the ruling stated.

Among the reasons the appeals court gave for reversing the judge’s decision were that Jimenez-Zenquiz’s stories as to what he was trying to do after he took the van did not add up.

Though Jimenez-Zenquiz said he was taking the children to his aunt’s house to get help for them, the children were found “walking in an open field where no houses are located. Second (Jimenez-Zenquiz) never produced this aunt. If she exists, she never gave a statement or testimony to corroborate (Jimenez-Zenquiz’s) story.” The ruling noted that Jimenez-Zenquiz may have been trying to get help for the children or “At worst, he lied about taking the children to the aunt’s house and intended to either harm them or leave them in the field, unattended and alone,” the ruling states.

“Regardless, even assuming that (Jimenez-Zenquiz’s) claim is true and he did not know the children were inside the van when he drove off, the record reveals he committed all of the elements of the crime of kidnapping,” the ruling states.