YOUNGSTOWN — Louis N. Lebron, 20, of Struthers, had two court hearings Tuesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court — both related to his single act of walking away from an alternative sentencing program at the Community Corrections Association of Youngstown on April 20.

What Lebron may not have realized was that by taking advantage of another person’s escape to escape himself, he was putting himself in trouble twice — once as a probation violation from his underlying burglary conviction and a second time when a new high-level felony of escape charge was brought against him.

At his first hearing, Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Maureen Sweeney sentenced Lebron to two to three years in prison after Lebron pleaded guilty to the second-degree felony escape.

Later Tuesday, he went before Judge John Durkin, where he pleaded guilty to the probation violation and was sentenced to three to four-and-a-half years in prison to be served at the same time as the escape, for a total of three-to-four-and-a-half years in prison, with credit for 266 days he spent in the county jail.

It was clear at the second hearing that Durkin was baffled by Lebron’s inability to avoid making bad decisions that involved following another person or a group of people in making bad decisions.

At Lebron’s sentencing hearing in April on the underlying burglary charge, Durkin told Lebron he was giving him 30 days in the Mahoning County jail and three years of probation for his July 2024 crime in which Lebron and another man broke into an apartment on Crandall Avenue on the North Side, “kicked the bathroom door open,” but never had a chance to do anything else before Youngstown police arrested him and the other man.

Durkin said then that Lebron was lucky that the assistant prosecutor in the case was “asking for you to get probation. I think it is primarily because you are 19 years old.”

But the assistant prosecutor also brought up the rough childhood Lebron had, which was mentioned again Tuesday and involved him moving from one foster home to another and having a drug-addicted mother.

The Mahoning County Adult Probation Department submitted a report on the details of Lebron walking away from CCA. It states that another resident of the program tried to forcefully open the rear emergency door of the facility and asked “Are you ready, boys?”

The staff tried to stop the behavior, but the male persisted in trying to leave, and he eventually succeeded, the report states. Lebron followed him out the door, and the director told staff to shut down the facility. Lebron was arrested several days later.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Durkin added up all of the strikes against Lebron — the burglary conviction, the escape from CCA and the additional charges Lebron picked up — misdemeanor of criminal trespass Dec. 10 and resisting arrest Dec. 30 — while awaiting sentencing on the burglary.

Before Durkin handed down the sentence, he told Lebron he remembered sentencing him the last time and finding that there were others involved in the burglary who were seemingly more responsible for the incident than Lebron was.

Durkin said he gave the lighter sentence “reluctantly” because of the new misdemeanor charges Lebron picked up. When asked by the judge to explain his escape from CCA, Lebron said he “wasn’t thinking straight.”

Durkin said he was not going to give Lebron the maximum or minimum sentence. He told Lebron that he could spend more than three years in prison if his conduct in prison is bad. That decision will be made by prison officials.

Durkin told Lebron he hopes the day comes when Lebron takes advantage of programs available in prison.

“You could have avoided all of this if you just would have completed the (CCA) program, making better choices,” Durkin said. “You’re still going to be a young man when you get out. And I hope you start using your head.”