Staff photo / Ed Runyan Stacie A. Gilmore, 51, testified Thursday morning as the last witness in her kidnapping and child endangering trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, denying that she ever used physical punishment on a boy. Late in the day, the jury found her guilty of the misdemeanor offense of lawful restraint instead of kidnapping. It also found her guilty of felony and misdemeanor counts of child endangering and misdemeanor domestic violence.

YOUNGSTOWN — A jury found Stacie A. Gilmore, 51, not guilty of kidnapping and was instead found guilty of the lesser included offense of unlawful restraint at the end of her trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

The jury also found Gilmore guilty of felony child endangering, misdemeanor child endangering and misdemeanor domestic violence. The jury deliberated about two hours before returning its verdict after a three-day trial that saw Gilmore take the stand in her own defense.

The difference between misdemeanor unlawful restraint and felony kidnapping is significant, because Gilmore could have gotten about 10 years in prison if she had been convicted of kidnapping. She cannot get any prison time for the unlawful restraint and the two other misdemeanors, though Gilmore could get several years in prison on the felony child endangering.

When Visiting Judge Andrew Logan read the verdicts, he said the jury was deadlocked on the kidnapping charge but found her guilty of a lesser included offense of unlawful restraint.

A lesser included offense is a crime that contains some elements of the greater crime, according to the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute.

Logan revoked Gilmore’s bond, and she was taken to the Mahoning County jail. She will be sentenced later.

Gilmore was one of several defense witnesses who testified Thursday as the last witness. She denied allegations that she used physical punishment on a child for close to seven years, starting in 2016 when the child was 5 years old.

Gilmore’s charges stem from allegations that she used zip ties, an extension cord and pipes to torture and cruelly abuse a boy.

Her lawyer, Jim Lanzo, said in opening statements Wednesday the boy lied when he told investigators that Gilmore abused him because Gilmore was overprotective, would not let him go to regular school or use the internet, and the boy “didn’t want to be there.”

Gilmore, of Youngstown, told jurors that the boy she is alleged to have abused was prone to running away, and she believed the presence of her boyfriend bothered him. When Lanzo asked Gilmore how many times the boy ran away, she said it happened a lot.

She said it was not unusual for her to come home from work and talk to him, then take a nap. And when she woke up, he would be gone.

“He started taking the phone with him,” she said. He would call her and say, “I’m not gone. I just had to take a walk because I feel this way. I’m going to call and you can come get me.” She said he would send her text messages that said, “I’m going for a walk,” she said.

The allegations against Gilmore were made after the boy went to the Target store in Boardman in 2023 and stayed for multiple hours. Boardman police were contacted, and they investigated.

When Lanzo asked Gilmore about that day, she said she had been “hit upside the head” by a piece of furniture she was moving for a client she was working for. She said she and the boy were “supposed to go to the Target together,” that day, but when she went home, she needed a nap. “I said as soon as I wake up, we are going to go to the Target,” she testified.

She got a call from the Boardman police telling her where the boy was, she said.

Lanzo asked about being interviewed by Detective Bob Smith of the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office and whether she knew the interview was being recorded. She said she didn’t care if it was being recorded.

Lanzo said Smith has indicated that he could not find that body camera recording. Gilmore said she needed that video so the jurors could hear it because she disputes that she said several things.

Lanzo asked Gilmore if she had told Smith that she had tied the boy up, and she denied it. She said one time she tied a piece of a bed sheet to her leg and to the boy’s leg. She said she told him that way if he tried to leave, “I’m going with you,” adding that she was “in trouble now” and was ordered to pay a fine because of him.

She said the night she tied them together, he did not “have the urge to leave.”

As to allegations that she zip-tied the boy, part of the kidnapping allegations, she said, “I’ve never restrained (the boy). I talk to him. I’m a talker. Do I take things away from him? Yes.” She mentioned things like taking his tablet computer as examples of her style of punishment.

When Lanzo mentioned photos taken by law enforcement of her home that purportedly showed poor living conditions, she explained that as being part of her interest in making crafts and doing landscaping. “I’m not a hoarder,” she said. “I have inventory. I have tools. There is stuff in totes, in boxes.”

She said officers had seen items in her house that were eventually going to be used to remodel her kitchen, including a microwave, dishwasher and stove.

When Lanzo asked where the boy slept, she said it was on a couch because he had broken three beds from jumping on them. She said it is not true that the boy slept in the basement. She also never tied the boy to a post in the basement, she said.

She acknowledged that she is protective and does not let the boy watch television. “We watch certain things on the tablet” computer, she said.

She said she does not like public schools. The boy was reading at 9 months old and knows sign language and Spanish, she said, adding, “and he had playmates.”

Assistant Mahoning County Prosecutor Caitlyn Andrews said in opening statements in the trial that Gilmore would “zip tie” the boy, “And while he was tied up, she would hit him with these objects and she would abuse him.”

Lanzo said in opening statements that Gilmore is a “bit of a hoarder. There is nothing that is thrown away, really in the house. Stacie is saving it for repurposing, later use. She is a bit of a crafter. She makes artwork. She does nails, things of that nature.”

Logan, a retired former Trumbull County Common Pleas Court judge, is filling in for a Mahoning County Common Pleas Court judge this week.