YOUNGSTOWN — A jury deliberated a little over an hour in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court before returning not guilty verdicts Wednesday on all three charges brought against Robyn E. Johnson, 29, of Boardman.

The verdict was reached Wednesday afternoon in the trial, which lasted almost three days. Johnson was facing charges of discharging a firearm on or near prohibited premises and two counts of felonious assault, all with gun specifications, for a 2023 incident in Youngstown.

Johnson was accused of firing a gun into a car containing the victim and a man, hitting the victim, Sheala Perkins, in the shoulder.

“The bullet rested in her lung, where it still sits,” Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Anissa Modarelli said during opening statements. Modarelli said Johnson admits she shot the other woman. “But she will want you to believe that these things were done in self-defense.”

Modarelli told jurors, “This is not a case of self-defense. The actions of the defendant are not even close to self-defense. First, (Johnson) was the aggressor and started a confrontation with the victim, even after the victim tried to avoid the defendant’s hostility. The defendant aggressively followed her. This is not the behavior of a person in fear. This is the behavior of an angry person, a violent person.”

Modarelli said that under Ohio law, a person is allowed to use force “only if they reasonably believe (it) is necessary to defend themselves from an imminent threat of death or serious physical harm.”

Modarelli added, “She has to say that she reasonably believed she was in imminent danger and the force she used was necessary to prevent that harm that she was fearful of.”

Defense attorney Michael Kivlighan, meanwhile, told jurors in opening statements that Johnson was at the King’s Court bar on South Avenue the night of the shooting and left near closing time.

“But what she did not know is that there was a Cadillac parked in the parking lot” with a man and (Perkins) inside. Security video shows the car backing into a parking spot and turning into the parking lot, Kivlighan said. As soon as Johnson pulled out of the parking lot, so did the Cadillac, Kivlighan said. She became concerned about the Cadillac and drove back to South Avenue to drive on a busier road, Kivlighan said. The Cadillac followed her.

He said the two cars ended up beside each other on South Avenue at Midlothian Boulevard, and the alleged victim was “yelling, screaming, throwing her arms up in the air,” Kivlighan said.

Kivlighan said the cars stopped at South Avenue and Midlothian. Surveillance video shows the door of the Cadillac open and Perkins got out with a gun in her hand, Kivlighan said.

Johnson was going to testify that she was able to get the gun from Perkins and fired it several times, Kivlighan said. If Johnson would have been convicted, she could have gotten about 20 years in prison.