Staff photo / Ed Runyan Ricardo Ramirez-Vazquez, 39, pleaded guilty Monday to charges of aggravated burglary and felony domestic violence involving a woman in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. He wore a headset to help an interpreter provide language translation during the hearing.

YOUNGSTOWN — Ricardo Ramirez-Vazquez, 39, was sentenced to two to three years in prison Monday after pleading guilty to aggravated burglary and felony domestic violence for a Dec. 11, 2024, incident involving a woman on South Jackson Street on the East Side.

Mahoning County prosecutors and the defense agreed to recommend that sentence, and Ramirez-Vazquez gets credit for 460 days already served in the Mahoning County jail awaiting trial.

His attorney, Mark Lavelle, informed Ramirez-Vazquez at the end of the hearing that he can expect to be released from prison this December, but Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Anthony Donofrio said that would only be the case if Ramirez-Vazquez has good conduct in prison.

A Youngstown police report states that officers were called to the home at 6:16 a.m. for a domestic dispute. A child made the call and hung up after the call taker heard her say “He’s coming,” the report states. When officers arrived, they could hear arguing and no one would answer the door. Officers used the public address system on a police cruiser until a woman and children answered the front door. Ramirez-Vazquez appeared on the landing of the steps and called out to the officers and was detained, the report states.

When officers spoke with the woman, they saw that she had a reddish bruising to the inside of one eye. When the woman was asked if she was hit that day, she said she was bitten and showed the officer her forearm, which had “reddening circular patterns consistent with a bite mark.”

She said Ramirez-Vazquez also bit her face. She showed the officer that he “latched onto the bridge of her nose to include the corners of her eyes. It was this bite that was hard and forceful enough to cause her nose to bleed,” the report states.

The woman said Ramirez-Vazquez was not supposed to be there because she had a domestic violence protection order from a previous incident. The woman showed the officer the order, which also included the four children in the home at the time as being protected.

Ramirez-Vazquez had been served with the “ex-parte” part of the order Sept. 27, 2024, in the Mahoning County jail, the report states. Ramirez is the father of the two youngest children, the report adds. The children were scared, but not injured.

The woman said sometime after she and the children had gone to bed, Ramirez-Vazquez came into the house through the rear door. He approached her in the bedroom and began yelling at her, asking why she had him arrested the previous time and why she got out a protection order, the report states.

She said he bit her on the left arm several times, then her face and “latched on like he was a dog.” When the police arrived, he stood in front of her so she could not answer the door. The woman was rubbing her neck and swallowing hard and told the officer that he grabbed a thick chain on her neck and pulled it, preventing her from breathing. He stopped. A red linear mark was starting to form on the woman’s neck.

The woman said she wiped blood from her nose on a T-shirt. An officer took the T-shirt as evidence. The children caught the school bus because she had no one to watch them, and the woman was taken to the hospital.

She told officers she did not want to file charges. She said she was very fearful of Ramirez-Vazquez.

Part of Ramirez-Vazquez’s agreement called for felony charges of violating a protection order and strangulation to be dismissed.

Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Kyle Hilles told Donofrio the prosecutor’s office had made many attempts to contact the victim in the case, but they were unable to reach her.

Defense attorney Mark Lavelle noted that the house where the incident occurred was his own house. Lavelle said he believed that issue and the question of whether Ramirez-Vazquez could be found guilty of first-degree felony aggravated burglary, under which he was indicted was the reason for the terms of the plea agreement, as well as “evidentiary issues” by the prosecutor’s office.

In response, Donofrio asked Hilles whether the victim was “aware of the resolution” of the case. Hilles said letters were written to her and they were not returned. “As far as we are aware, she is aware of what the resolution was intended to be.”