JEFFERSON — Two Ashtabula residents will spend the next eight years in prison for complicity to a home robbery in which their accomplice held a gun to a teen-ager’s head while they rummaged through the house, a judge ruled Thursday.
Marcel A. Thompson, 18, of 1009 W. 41st St., and Lamar J. Siler, 18, of 2207 Anthony Ave., pleaded guilty to complicity to robbery, a second-degree felony, according to Ashtabula County Common Pleas Court records.
Siler was given the maximum sentence — eight years in prison — by Judge Alfred Mackey after Siller threatened one of the victims in court.
Thompson was scheduled for sentencing at the same time as Siler, but Thompson did not show up in court. When court officials called his home, they were told he was sleeping, according to the Ashtabula County Prosecutor’s office.
Mackey ordered a warrant for Thompson’s arrest.
About 15 minutes after Siler’s sentencing, Thompson arrived at the courthouse and Mackey sentenced him to the maximum eight years in prison, prosecutors said.
Siler and Thompson’s legal problems began Nov. 21 when they accompanied Lavelle Holley, 21, also of Ashtabula, to a West 43rd Street home in the Ashtabula Harbor. Two teenage boys were alone in that home that night, police said.
The threesome busted out the window of the front door, demanded money from the teens and threatened them with a gun, prosecutors said.
As Holley, Siler and Thompson broke into the house, one of the teens ran upstairs and retrieved his father’s handgun, police said.
Holley held a gun to one of the teen’s head, telling him that he, Holley, would kill him, prosecutors said. Siler and Thompson ransacked the house. As Holley reached the landing of the stairs, the other teen was coming down the stairs with his father’s gun. He shot Holley in the left thigh, prosecutors said.
The gunshot scared all of the men off, prosecutors said.
The teen was not charged in the shooting, police said.
Police caught up with Holley in the emergency room at Ashtabula County Medical Center later that same night, but Siler and Thompson remained at large, prosecutors said. The men later turned themselves in.
On April 13, both men entered pleas to complicity to burglary, a second-degree felony, punishable by a minimum of two and a maximum of eight years in prison. Mackey ordered a pre-sentence report on each man and deferred sentencing until the report was completed by the adult parole authority.
But on April 21, prosecutors filed a motion to revoke bond on Siler and Thompson because the men were harassing and intimidating members of the victim’s family. As a result, Mackey ordered the sentencing to go on Thursday.
On April 28, Holley was sentenced to five years in prison for aggravated burglary and has remained in the Ashtabula County Jail since Nov. 21, prosecutors said.
Bruce Bennett was the prosecuting attorney.
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