YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office has asked to withdraw the motion it filed Feb. 27 that asked Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Anthony D’Apolito to vacate the guilty plea Saun Peterson reached in the stray-bullet shooting death of 15-year-old Amya Monserrat in 2023.

On Monday, Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutors Katherine Jones and John Juhasz filed the new motion, which asked that D’Apolito “proceed to sentencing as previously scheduled on April 15, 2026.”

The reason prosecutors filed the Feb. 27 motion was that they say Peterson, 23, violated the terms of his plea agreement by testifying falsely and not testifying in the way he said he would when his co-defendant, Danyo Sellers, 19, went on trial last month.

At one point in his testimony Peterson “took the Fifth” and refused to answer any more of Juhasz’s questions. It led to a mistrial in Sellers’ case. A week later, Sellers was found not guilty in a retrial and was set free.

The new filing explains that under the law, prosecutors faced with a defendant who fails to live up to the requirements of a plea agreement, can either “withdraw the plea agreement” or simply make arguments for a different sentence than was originally intended.

The filing quoted federal case law in stating that the failure of a defendant to live up to the terms of a plea agreement “relieves” prosecutors of the obligation it had under the plea agreement.

The filing adds, “The State gives notice that, because Peterson breached his plea agreement by lying in open court under oath and by refusing to testify when his plea agreement called for him to testify in proceedings involving Danyo Sellers, the State is no longer bound by its agreement to recommend 10 to 12 1/2 years (in prison) at sentencing.”

The filing does not give a reason for the change in strategy.

The earlier prosecutor filing states that when Peterson reached his plea agreement Nov. 27, 2023, he gave a “proffer,” meaning a sworn statement, that on April 15, 2023, he drove his car past Martha’s Boulevard Tavern on Southern Boulevard in Youngstown with Sellers in the front passenger seat and two other people in the back seat.

He stated that there were kids outside of the tavern with guns and that Peterson drove his car aggressively as a result. He said that Sellers fired a gun over the top of Peterson’s car.

Amya suffered a fatal gunshot wound about that time, though prosecutors say it is not certain whose gunshots killed her — Sellers’ or one from kids firing guns from the parking lot where Amya was at the time she was hit by the bullet.

As part of the agreement Peterson reached with prosecutors, Peterson pleaded guilty to felonious assault, a second-degree felony; involuntary manslaughter, a first degree felony; improperly handling firearms in a motor vehicle, a fourth-degree felony; obstructing justice, a third-degree felony; and two drive-by-shooting gun specifications of one and three years, according to documents in Peterson’s case.

It is not known whether all of those sentences can be stacked on top of each other, but the offenses and their maximum sentences add up to 26.5 years.

Peterson’s attorney, Michael Kivlighan, has not yet responded to either motion by prosecutors.