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.