David Sweeney, father of Rowan Sweeney, talks to, from left, Jennifer Paris, Mahoning County assistant prosecutor, and county Prosecutor Gina DeGenova after Brandon Crump Jr., 21, was sentenced to 52 years to life in prison for killing Rowan and badly injuring four adults Sept. 21, 2020, in a Perry Street house in Struthers. At right is David Sweeney’s wife, Bailey.

YOUNGSTOWN — Judge Anthony D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court said Monday he would have liked to sentenced Brandon Crump Jr., 21, to life in prison without parole for killing 4-year-old Rowan Sweeney and trying to kill four adults in a home in Struthers on Sept. 21, 2020.

But as a former county Juvenile Court administrator, D’Apolito said Monday he knew he could not do that, or give the roughly 89-years-to-life sentence prosecutors sought.

But the judge said he decided to sentence Crump to 52 years to life in prison because under case law, giving Crump more than that might have been overturned later and forced him to sentence Crump again. He said he wants closure for Rowan’s family, not more hearings.

The judge said his reading of relevant court rulings is that an individual who commits a murder as a juvenile has to have a “meaningful opportunity” to rejoin society in his or her 60s or 70s.

If he were to sentence Crump to 89 years to life, “clearly he would be much older than what most courts would look at as a lawful sentence,” the judge said.

Mahoning County Prosecutor Gina DeGenova responded that her office’s research indicates a defendant’s age in such a case “should have no bearing on the sentence” because Crump “will be eligible for parole consideration after 25 years, and he will then come up every 10 years.”

The judge agreed that Crump will be eligible for his first parole hearing after serving 25 years — minus nearly four years already locked up awaiting trial.

DeGenova and Assistant Prosecutor Jennifer Bonish stated in a sentencing memorandum to the judge that an Ohio law that became effective April 12, 2021, grants parole eligibility to juvenile offenders, “regardless of their original sentence.”

DeGenova noted at Monday’s hearing that Crump was not only convicted of the aggravated murder of Rowan, but also four counts of attempted murder involving four adults. “We have five separate victims, five separate acts,” she said. All four of the adult victims — including Alexis Schneider, Rowan’s mother — survived serious injuries, DeGenova said.

She said Crump was a mere 111 days away from turning 18 and facing adult penalties for the murder and other shootings.

The prosecution sentencing memorandum said Crump “showed zero humanity” in his actions. “In the days that followed (Crump) showed zero humanity. What did he do? The very night of the murder, he flaunted the cash he stole from Yarnell Green that night, posting pictures on social media of him holding this cash, as if he hit the lottery.”

The memorandum also described Crump’s juvenile criminal history. When he was 12, he was found delinquent (the adult equivalent of guilty) in Mahoning County Juvenile Court for felony carrying a concealed weapon.

Also at age 12, he was found delinquent on two counts of felony breaking and entering. At age 13, Crump was found guilty of misdemeanor receiving stolen property.

Crump was the third of the three defendants sentenced in the killing and shootings, which prosecutors said began as a robbery but escalated into mayhem. Prosecutors say Crump was the shooter, arriving in a car driven by co-defendant Kimonie Bryant, 27, who was part of a robbery plan with co-defendant Andre McCoy Jr., 24. Bryant was sentenced to 20-years-to-life. McCoy got 15-years-to-life.

After the hearing was over, David Sweeney, Rowan’s father, said he thought D’Apolito “Did as great of a job as he can do given the fact that his hands are tied. I truly believe he would have liked to sentence (Crump) to life without parole. Obviously he can’t. I think he definitely deserves it. No time he could have given him would ever have been enough. It doesn’t change the fact of what happened.”

Crump did not offer any comments before sentencing, but his attorney, Lou DeFabio, spoke about the report compiled by an expert witness for the defense who reviewed records about Crump from Youngstown City Schools, Mahoning County Children Services and the Mahoning County Juvenile Court.

“I’ve been doing this for 32 years. I’ve never read a report like this,” DeFabio said. “I’ve never looked at thousands of pages of CSB records that start off when this defendant was 2 months, old, born marijuana addicted because his mother was smoking weed.”

He went to live with his grandmother. “Dad disappears from Brandon’s life early on,” DeFabio said. Brandon’s mother “pawned Brandon off on any number of people throughout his life, such that by the time he is 11, he is living on the streets.”

His mother used him to “steal food to feed the family or sell a gun to a guy which ended up in him getting shot during the gun sale,” DeFabio said.

He said children “don’t have the brain development, physiologically, psychological or mentally. They are not the same as a person who is 24, 25, 26, 27.” DeFabio said efforts were made to rehabilitate Brandon through Mahoning County Juvenile Court, but Crump’s mother “didn’t do anything to follow up on this. She was getting to any of these things he needed to be taken to. She was still pawning him off on other people.”

After DeFabio finished talking Monday, D’Apolito said, “The law does not allow me to impose life without parole. That is what I think you deserve. If anyone in any case deserves it, this is the case. But I cannot do that.”

The judge said the report prepared by the expert defense witness stated that Crump was “abused, physically and sexually, and his mother had multiple contacts with Children Services, multiple contacts with law enforcement, his education issues and problems he had while attending school, his history with his father being killed.”

Crump has a “substance abuse history with alcohol, marijuana, hallucinogens, benzodiazepines, stimulants, nicotine.”

An evaluation showed Crump “tested, if you will, positive for emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect, parents separated and divorced, mother treated violently, substance abuse in the household, mental illness in the household.”

D’Apolito said he acknowledges that Crump “has had a very difficult life.

But he said not only should he consider “what happened to” Crump, “but also what happened to the victims.”

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