YOUNGSTOWN — Juvenile Makhi Cotton, who shot a 12-year-old boy in August 2024 in Youngstown while trying to steal the younger boy’s shoes, was sent to an Ohio Department of Youth Services facility to be detained up to age 21. The case was not bound over to adult court.

The Ohio Department of Youth Services is sometimes referred to as juvenile prison, but its website says it is the “juvenile corrections system for the state of Ohio.” It is required by Ohio law to “confine felony offenders, ages 10 to 21, who have been adjudicated and committed by one of Ohio’s 88 county juvenile courts,” the website states.

Makhi, of Youngstown, who was 14 at the time of the shooting and is now 15, was charged with attempted murder and aggravated robbery in the incident, which Youngstown police said happened at 8:45 p.m. Aug. 17, 2024, on Gibson Street near Cambridge Avenue on the South Side.

Capt. Jason Simon, head of the Youngstown Police detective division, said the shoes cost about $1,000. He said Makhi “wanted the shoes and was going to take them by any means necessary. In this case he shot at and injured the 12-year-old, didn’t get the shoes and ran away from the scene.”

The 12-year-old was in stable condition after the shooting, Simon said. It appeared the boys knew each other, but they were not “friends, enemies, anything like that. I think they knew of each other,” Simon stated. Makhi was identified as the shooter during an investigation and was arrested sometime later.

At Makhi’s final hearing in Mahoning County Juvenile Court in February, Mahoning County Juvenile Court Judge Theresa Dellick approved an amendment to the boy’s attempted murder charge to felonious assault, and his felonious assault charge was amended to kidnapping, according to a juvenile court document.

Dellick accepted Makhi’s plea of “admission” (the juvenile equivalent to “guilty”) to felonious assault and kidnapping and ordered him sent to an ODYS facility “for institutionalization in a secure facility” for one year up to a maximum term of age 21 on the felonious assault.

She ordered Makhi sent to ODYS for three years, up to age 21 on the kidnapping and another three years on a gun specification, all up to age 21. The gun specification has to be served prior to the kidnapping sentence.

Makhi got credit for the time he spent in the Martin P. Joyce Juvenile Justice Center awaiting the outcome of his case, according to the judgment entry in his case. Several misdemeanor and felony charges were dismissed, according to the document.

Dellick found Makhi to be a “Serious Youthful Offender,” which makes him eligible for an adult prison term depending on how he does in the ODYS system. But Makhi also “was advised of his right to apply for an early release from the Department of Youth Services,” the entry notes. Makhi has the right to apply for expungement and sealing of his record in his juvenile court proceedings, the filing states.

The Youngstown Local School District will bear the cost of educating Makhi “unless the Department of Education determines that a different school district shall be responsible for bearing the cost,” the document states. Makhi “shall complete a mental health assessment and trauma counseling at the Ohio Department of Youth Services,” the entry states.

EARLIER INCIDENTS

The incident involving the 12-year-old was not the first time Makhi was in trouble with the law. In fact, he was detained in the Martin P. Joyce Juvenile Justice Center detention center in the spring and summer of 2024, prior to the incident involving the 12-year-old, according to juvenile court documents and court officials.

Makhi was charged April 16, 2024, with grand theft of a motor vehicle, felony assault and possessing criminal tools, all low-level felonies, and misdemeanor charges of criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, two counts of resisting arrest and one count of criminal damaging.

The most serious of the charges, a fourth-degree felony assault, alleged that Makhi caused or tried to cause physical harm to a woman who was working as a peace officer, investigator or person performing emergency medical service in their official duties, documents state.

A lesser felony of possessing criminal tools, alleged that Makhi possessed a screwdriver “with the purpose to use it criminally.”

After a hearing in August 2024 regarding the shooting of the 12-year-old, Makhi’s mother told The Vindicator Makhi was in and out of the juvenile detention center three times during the course of the earlier criminal case, and she urged Mahoning County Juvenile Court Magistrate Kareb Romano Melone to keep her son in juvenile detention rather than send him home or to a relative’s house.

She had to decide Aug. 8 whether to have Makhi placed with a family member “and have him freely roaming the streets or take him home with me and try to have them come into the home and help out. I made that decision to let him come home,” she said.

In the June-July time frame, the juvenile court put Makhi on house arrest, but there was no way to keep him at home, so she called probation officials in the juvenile court, and they told her to call police. She called the police, but they would not pick him up, she said.

Makhi’s mother said Makhi has “some major mental-health issues,” and his mental health had been evaluated.

An April 18, 2024, judgment entry from Magistrate Romano Melone stated that she ordered a mental health and competency evaluation for Makhi by the Forensic Center of Northeast Ohio in Austintown. Court officials said Makhi was deemed to be competent to face charges in juvenile court.