Man who served prison term for manslaughter sentenced for federal gun crime
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) — A city man who served prison time for manslaughter and aggravated robbery was sentenced Thursday to 19 months in federal prison on a gun charge.
Steve Gardner, 41, received the sentence from U.S. Judge J. Philip Calabrese in the U.S. Northern District Court of Ohio after an earlier guilty plea to a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm, a fourth-degree felony.
He was indicted in September 2023 based on a criminal complaint from a Sept. 10, 2022, arrest by a trooper with the Canfield Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol who pulled over a car Gardner was driving that had been reported stolen.
An affidavit in the case said the trooper pulled the car at about 11:30 p.m. in the northbound lanes of Interstate 680. The affidavit said the car had been reported stolen from Boardman.
The affidavit said Gardner would not cooperate with the trooper and he lay in the middle of the road and would not move. After Gardner was handcuffed and taken off the road, the affidavit said he was searched and the trooper found a loaded 9mm handgun in his pants.
Gardner is not allowed to have a gun because of a 2006 conviction in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on a count of involuntary manslaughter for the March 22, 2003, shooting death of former Youngstown Pride basketball player Larry Robbins, 39.
Robbins' body was found in a pool of blood at about 7 a.m. on a sidewalk in the 400 block of Norwood Avenue on the North Side.
Gardner had been sentenced to seven years in prison after he pleaded guilty to a March 1, 2010, home invasion at a home in the 800 block of Norwood Avenue.
