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WARREN -- A career criminal who a Trumbull County jury decided was involved in a January 2022 robbery at the Dollar General on Tod Avenue SW in Warren Township deserves the maximum sentence, according to a prosecutor.
Karindu Mallory, 43, of Williamsburg Street NW, is expected to be sentenced Wednesday before Judge Sean O'Brien in Common Pleas Court.
Jurors in late March found Mallory guilty of one charge of aggravated robbery with a gun specification. Assistant Prosecutor Charles Morrow in a sentencing memo sent to O'Brien last week cites his past record in asking for the maximum 14- to 19 1/2-year prison sentence for Mallory.
"At the ripe old age of 13, in 1993, the defendant was first adjudicated 'delinquent' of attempted breaking and entering (misdemeanor), which was reduced from aggravated burglary (first-degree felony)," Morrow wrote, noting he also was ruled "delinquent" after two assaults the same year.
By age 16, Mallory was sent to the state Department of Youth Services for a robbery, trafficking in drugs, resisting arrest and drug abuse offenses.
As an adult beginning in 1999, Morrow said Mallory has been convicted of seven different felonies and nine misdemeanors.
Morrow said the only time the man hadn't been committing a crime was when he was incarcerated.
In his latest criminal venture, Mallory was convicted of being one of two masked men involved in the early morning Jan. 2 holdup of the convenience store.
Testimony from the three-day trial showed that a manager was forced to empty the contents of a safe and the store's cash register into two bags shortly after the store's opening. However, one of the bags had a hole in it as the bandits were fleeing in the parking lot of the store, and they were dropping currency.
"It was a bit of a Hansel and Gretel tale," Morrow said during opening statements to the jury.
In his sentencing memo, Morrow asked the judge to consider the victim when deciding the length of sentence.
"The victim in this case has suffered psychologically and emotionally because of the robbery," Morrow wrote. "At least two times, the robbers threatened to shoot her, even pointing the gun inches from her head."
Warren Township police detective James Johnson testified he found coins immediately after the robbery that tracked to two homes on Miller Street, located south of the store.
Morrow said the bandits ran south to a Miller Street address where they got into a white SUV. One of the Miller Street residents testified he saw the two men run into his back yard and one of the men called him by name.
Joseph Daniel, an inmate at the Community Corrections Association prison in Youngstown after being convicted of complicity to robbery charge connected to this case, admitted on the stand that he drove the getaway SUV that morning.
A woman who lived in a Fifth Street apartment complex testified and identified one of the gunmen in the store surveillance photo by his gold shoes. The woman told jurors that man had stayed at her home the night before, and she had seen him return in the morning with another man in dark clothing.
The woman testified she had only known the man as "Haf," but officers later told her his name was Karindu Mallory. She identified Mallory as the man with gold shoes in the photo.
Johnson testified that his chief, Ben Harrell, identified Mallory from the photo because Harrell knew him when he worked for the Warren Police Department. Johnson also put together a video package from surveillance cameras of businesses in the area that was played to the jurors. The video tracked the white SUV's whereabouts before, during and after the robbery.
Defense attorney Michael Scala told jurors the state lacked evidence that directly ties his client to the crime "beyond a reasonable doubt." That is the standard in the state of Ohio to produce a guilty verdict in criminal cases.
Before trial, Mallory told investigators he was at the Hollywood Gaming at Mahoning Valley Racecourse in Austintown at the time of the robbery, but no witnesses corroborated that story.
Jurors took less than half a day to convict Mallory.
By late last week, Scala had not sent the court a sentencing memo on behalf of Mallory, according to court records.