IN COURT — Akerelhotep R. Hartley listens during Wednesday’s court appearance. -- Linda Harris

STEUBENVILLE — Jefferson County grand jurors will decide whether a Wintersville man should stand trial on charges that he allegedly fired two shots into a house days after his 15-year-old girlfriend broke up with him.

Municipal Judge John Mascio Jr. found probable cause Wednesday to bind 20-year-old Akerelhotep R. Hartley, 20, 524 Canton Road, over for the next grand jury term.

Hartley allegedly fired the gun into a second-story window of a residence in the 500 block of South Fifth Street in the early morning hours of Feb. 1, then fled the scene. He was found more than 24 hours later sleeping in the basement of a property in the 1000 block of McNeal Avenue. No one was injured, but the intended victim told police she was “in the room” when the bullets pierced the window glass.

Nine-millimeter casings were found at the crime scene, but the gun has not been recovered.

Hartley’s court-appointed attorney, Eric Reszke, argued that the state’s evidence was “awfully thin to non-existent,” telling the judge no one actually saw who fired the shots, nor did Hartley have a firearm or ammunition in his possession when he was taken into custody the next day. He also keyed on the lighter-colored hoodie Hartley was wearing when he was taken into custody, pointing out police had said surveillance video obtained from the Jefferson Metropolitan Housing Authority showed the alleged shooter was wearing dark colors.

“There’s no firearm, no eyewitnesses, no ammunition, no jail calls, no DNA, no fingerprints, no gunshot residue,” he told Mascio.

But City Prosecutor Steven Lamatrice insisted what the defendant was wearing when he was taken into custody has no bearing on the case.

“Who wears the same clothes for two days? Nobody,” Lamatrice said, pointing out offenders typically get rid of evidence to avoid having it in their possession if and when they’re taken into custody. “You’d have to be a moron (not to throw the gun away.) Who’s going to keep a gun that was used in a felony?”

Earlier, Sgt. Brian Bissett testified a shooter had fired two rounds at an upstairs window at the residence. He said the JMHA cameras captured footage of the flash of a gun being fired twice as well as audio of the subject fleeing, “yelling as he ran, something along the lines of, ‘You think I’m (expletive) playing?'” Bissett testified the juvenile identified the voice in that audio clip as Hartley’s and that she told him she’d been on a video call with the defendant prior to the incident in which he was “wearing dark clothing (and) made some threats to … shoot (the house) up, in her words, and in that video clip showed her a firearm.”

Bissett said the family also turned over screenshots of text messages “they perceived as threats” and alleged Hartley had sent the juvenile a video immediately after the shots were fired questioning, “Why didn’t the boys blow back? There’s three of them and one of me.”

Bissett testified an Instagram video showed Hartley “singing, rapping … (and) part of the video references the juvenile, he’s holding up a magazine, a gun magazine, with ammunition in it and makes some derogatory comments (and) makes a reference to the juvenile’s mother.”

He said surveillance footage captured images of an individual wearing dark clothing approaching the scene prior to the shooting and fleeing the scene after, then meeting up with two other individuals and “going back in Beatty Park, hanging out in there for about an hour.”

Bissett also said before the shooting he found video of an individual wearing the dark clothing coming from the Tweed Avenue area and then again after, going back toward that area. Bissett said Hartley was taken into custody the following day “right off Tweed, on McNeal.”

Reszke was critical of the case against his client, pointing out police were “basing it off a (what a) 15-year-old said after an alleged shooting.”

Lamatrice insisted there was ample evidence to support the state’s case. He also pointed out the events unfolded around 3 a.m., and said, “We have cell tower info that (his) phone was there before the shooting, during the shooting and after the shooting, it was in that general area. We’re talking three o’clock in the morning … there’s not a lot of people out in downtown Steubenville at 3 a.m., so that phone (location) is sticking out, in my mind.”

He also reminded the judge that the juvenile victim had listened to the audio that was recorded as an individual was seen running from the scene yelling and had “identified it, 100 percent, instantly, (as Hartley’s voice.)”

After Mascio announced his ruling, Reszke pointed out Hartley doesn’t have a record and isn’t a flight risk and asked the judge to reduce his bond to $50,000. Instead, Mascio increased it to $500,000, saying the case information wasn’t available during the arraignment when he set bail at $300,000.