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WARREN -- A Niles man, sentenced last week to 12 years in a robbery case that included a parole violation, had three more years added to his prison term after he pleaded guilty Thursday to a kidnapping charge stemming from an October 2016 incident in Weathersfield.
Joseph Leasock, 51, of Grant Street, was sentenced by Trumbull County Common Pleas Court Judge Peter J. Kontos. Leasock, after initially turning down a plea bargain from the state, changed his mind and arranged through his attorney, John Juhasz, for a plea hearing in Kontos' courtroom.
He will serve a total of 15 years in prison.
On June 28, Judge W. Wyatt McKay sentenced Leasock to eight years in prison for a robbery conviction, plus another four years for a parole violation from a 2007 robbery conviction.
In the kidnapping case, according to assistant Trumbull County Prosecutor Diane Barber, Joseph Leasock held a 43-year-old Niles man at bay in a Weathersfield home on Oct. 2, 2016, after the victim had been severely beaten. Barber said Leasock refused to give treatment to the man who had internal injuries.
After he was hospitalized, the victim had to have his spleen removed and was in an induced coma for several days, Barber said. Barber said in the plea deal, the repeat violent offender specification was dropped, and Joseph Leasock received the minimum sentence allowable by law.
"My client had a limited role in the kidnapping," said Juhasz.
Leasock had a co-defendant, his brother Robert, who received a six-year prison sentence last month from Judge W. Wyatt McKay after he pleaded guilty to the kidnapping charge. Robert Leasock also received a concurrent six-year prison term from Judge Ronald J. Rice after he pleaded guilty to a second-degree robbery charge, the same case for which Joseph Leasock received the dozen-year term.