Parole was denied for a repeat violent offender in Trumbull County incarcerated at Marion Correctional Institution on November 18.

Joel Patterson Jr, 69, is currently serving a life sentence and has had a lengthy record of arrests and criminal charges from 1972 up until 1996 when he was last convicted.

Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins voiced his support for the decision to deny Patterson's parole.

"Our office is satisfied that the parole board saw fit to continue Patterson's incarceration. Time and time again, [Patterson] proved to be violent and dangerous to the community."

Patterson was first convicted in 1972 at the age of 17 for the murder of an Arco gas station employee in Warren.  On his 30th birthday he was paroled in 1985 but would return to prison for assaults on a woman in 1989. 

Patterson was released in 1991 but later that year he was arrested and sentenced again this time for trafficking cocaine.  After getting parole again in 1994 he damaged his ex-girlfriends car and had to complete a program within a halfway house. 

His final arrest was in December of 1995 after James Thomas III was shot five times.  This landed Patterson attempted murder charges alongside his life sentence from the case in 1972, which was reinstated.

Patterson will have another opportunity at parole in October of 2027.