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Home > Blogs > Dayton Courts: Legal and crime news > Archives > 2010 > April > 28 > Entry
Dumping children in trash leads to prison sentence
DAYTON — Tommie Johnson Jr., who took his girlfriend’s small children and then left them in a trash can last year, will spend 17 years in prison.
Johnson, 39, broke down and wept as he addressed Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Michael L. Tucker.
“I’m so sorry,” Johnson said, shaking as he wept. “May God forgive me.”
But assistant county prosecutor Erin Claypoole told Tucker that “what he did to those children is unforgivable.”
Johnson, 39, pleaded no contest to all indicted charges April 12, including two counts of attempted murder, four counts of kidnapping, three counts of domestic violence and one count of tampering with evidence.
Johnson’s daughter, 23-month-old Ashonti Johnson, and her 8-month-old brother, Tommie Johnson III, were plucked out of a city-issued trash bin behind a building at 902 E. Second St. on July 27 by two electricians.
“They were thrown away, considered disposable like a piece of garbage by Mr. Johnson, who refused to disclose to authorities the exact whereabouts of the children’s location,” said Gayle Bullard, director of Montgomery County Children Services, who gave a victim impact statement on behalf of the children.”It was a brutal, calculated action that nearly killed two innocent children, who had no other way to survive except for that basic instinct to cry.”
Bullard said the trash can was a “plastic prison” that the summer heat turned into a “deadly oven.” The children emerged dehydrated and covered with mud, she said.
Johnson took the kids after a domestic dispute with their mother. Johnson said he put the kids in the bin but intended to retrieve them, according to police.
The children are still in the custody of Children’s Services, Bullard said.
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