Boy who accidentally shot woman during street argument gets 20 years

A Toledo teenager who accidentally shot his girlfriend to death while firing toward participants in a street dispute received an agreed-to 20-year prison sentence Monday in Lucas County Common Pleas Court.

Nathan Mays, now 17, “brought a gun to a child’s fistfight and verbal argument,” Jennifer Worley, an assistant Lucas County prosecutor, told the court before remarking that while he didn’t intend to harm Jaelynn Poturalski, 18, on Sept. 3, 2023, “he intended to kill that day.”

“He had bad intentions. I don’t have the answer to what to do about all these guns,” Judge Dean Mandros later said before pronouncing the sentence. “It’s beyond me. If I had a magic wand, I could take care of these guns. But I don’t have one.”

Mays and his lawyer, Ann Baronas, had accepted Aug. 26 prosecutors’ offer to reduce a murder charge to involuntary manslaughter and reducing from first-degree to fourth-degree a count of firing on or near prohibited premises. The negotiated sentence included 11 to 16½ years for the manslaughter count, three years for the improper firing charge, and three-year gun specifications for both.

The 5½-year variable in Mays’ sentence is at the discretion of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, should Mays misbehave in prison.

In a very low voice, Mays apologized to Miss Poturalski’s family and his own “for the mistake that I made.

“I’m devastated that this happened and I wish I could trade places with Jaelynn to have her alive still,” he told the court. “...I truly loved Jaelynn. I never wanted this to happen this way.”

Ms. Worley said Mays, of the 400 block of Eastern Avenue, became involved in a dispute that originated with a 10-year-old boy hitting a smaller child with a plastic baseball bat. After police dispersed a crowd and left the scene in the 200 block of Langdon Street, Mays returned minutes later with a gun. Police were called a second time, and that 911 call picked up the sound of gunfire.

After accidentally shooting Miss Poturalski, Mays shot again toward the backs of two males involved in the argument, Ms. Worley said Monday.

Judge Mandros gave Mays credit for time already served before describing the case as “a tragedy on both sides of the aisle.”

Addressing several dozen people in the gallery, the judge then said: “If you have a gun in your house and you’re not going to keep it under lock and key, have it destroyed.”