ZANESVILLE, Ohio — A dispute over a lottery ticket escalated into a pistol-whipping and an armed break-in at the wrong home, and the Glouster man at the center of it has now pleaded guilty, the Zanesville Times Recorder reported.
Fredrick George Lashley, 46, of Glouster appeared before Judge Kelly Cottrill on Oct. 30 and pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary, a first-degree felony, and felonious assault, a second-degree felony, the Times Recorder reported. Both counts carried firearm specifications.
Lashley faces mandatory prison time with a possible maximum sentence of 23 years, according to a release from the Muskingum County Prosecutor’s Office cited by the Times Recorder. A pre-sentence investigation is ongoing, and sentencing is set for Dec. 7.
The case began Aug. 13, when Zanesville police responded to a city residence for a reported burglary, the Times Recorder reported. A woman told officers she heard a booming noise at the back door and went to the kitchen to investigate, where she found Lashley, who ran toward her pointing a handgun at her head and yelling, according to the report.
The woman grabbed the gun during the struggle and escaped to a bedroom, the Times Recorder reported. She and a minor child got out through the bedroom window and made it to a neighbor’s house.
Detectives later determined Lashley had broken into the wrong apartment, according to the Times Recorder. He reportedly believed he was breaking into the home of a man he had assaulted with his gun earlier, during a dispute over a lottery ticket.
Lashley has been held on a $1 million bond in the Muskingum County Jail since his booking on Sept. 3, the Times Recorder reported.
The timeline runs from the Aug. 13 break-in, through Lashley’s Sept. 3 booking into the county jail, to the Oct. 30 guilty plea before Judge Cottrill — a span in which the wrong-home burglary investigation tied the break-in back to the earlier lottery-ticket assault, according to the Times Recorder’s account of the prosecutor’s release.
He returns to court Dec. 7 for sentencing, when Judge Cottrill will weigh the completed pre-sentence investigation and the firearm specifications attached to both counts.
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