YOUNGSTOWN — The 14-year-old boy who shot and killed Keondre Lewis, 19, in Lewis’ home on Rhoda Avenue on the city’s West Side March 23 was sentenced Tuesday to four years in an Ohio Department of Youth Services facility.

Earlier in the hearing, Willie Wilks pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, a first-degree felony, and a gun specification. That was a reduction from the murder charge he faced previously.

Mahoning County Juvenile Court Judge Theresa Dellick walked the boy through the details of the plea agreement he and his attorney reached with prosecutors. Willie made clear he understood that he would be detained at an Ohio Department of Youth Services facility up to age 21 if he behaved poorly there.

But Dellick also said the boy’s time in juvenile detention would be no longer than 3.5 years as long as he behaves well. He gets credit for six months already spent in the Mahoning County Juvenile Justice Center awaiting trial.

Dellick noted that the 3.5-year minimum depends on “a lot of factors.” Later, prosecutors clarified that Sweeney can allow the teen to leave DYS detention earlier than 3.5 years under Ohio juvenile law.

At the end of the hearing, Lewis’ mother, Bridget Hammond, was allowed to speak and asked Willie:”What made you bring a gun to the house? You was just playing. All was cool.” She said, “I don’t know why you had to play with guns. My son is never coming home. Your mom still has got you.”

By the time she was done speaking, many of the people sitting near her were crying.

Then Dellick let Willie speak. “I would never put you in that position. I apologize for that,” he said.

The teen was scheduled to go to trial without a jury before Dellick Tuesday and today, but he entered the plea instead.

TESTIMONY

At the boy’s probable-cause hearing before Dellick in June, the 16-year-old brother of Lewis testified that Lewis and Willie were together in an upstairs room of the home on Rhoda Avenue the day of the shooting and later went downstairs together.

Then the 16-year-old and other family members upstairs heard a gunshot from downstairs “like a door closed and like a loud bang,” the 16-year-old said.

He went downstairs, saw his brother alone on the floor of the dining / family room, went upstairs and got his shoes, then ran out the front door “chasing after” the 14-year-old, who he said is his cousin. Before he could catch up, “the police got him,” he said.

When the 16-year-old was asked by Walter Madison, the attorney for Willie, if he loves Willie, he agreed he did.

In opening statements in that hearing, Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor John Juhasz said that when the teen left the home on Rhoda, he went to his own home on West Heights Avenue several blocks away. A weapon was seized by Youngstown police that was a match with a bullet shell casing found on the dining room table on Rhoda Avenue, he said.

In Madison’s opening statement, he suggested that the suspect “may have stated he wanted to hurt himself” when he arrived at his home.

The 16-year-old agreed under questioning by Madison that the killing of Willie’s brother, D’Andre Stores, 30, on March 3, 2024, in the parking lot of the Vibez Bar on East Midlothian Avenue was the reason the teen was staying at the home of Lewis and his family at the time of the shooting.

Lewis was a 2024 Youngstown East High School graduate. He was found with a gunshot wound when police arrived for a 2:14 p.m. shooting that had just happened, according to police reports at the time. While Youngstown police were on Rhoda Avenue, “multiple witnesses” gave the name of the shooter to police, a report states.

“Officers were able to locate the suspect at a different location and take him into custody,” it stated.