'Little czar' in Ohio school drug ring gets prison

( criminal? This young man is an entrepreneur and a job creator. He showed gumption and spunk and a can do attitude and this is how we reward him? Where’s the justice?)

By AMANDA LEE MYERS, APLEBANON, Ohio — A teenager convicted of selling up to $20,000 worth of high-grade marijuana a month to high school students in southwestern Ohio was sentenced Monday to serve six months to three years in a juvenile prison by a judge who called him "a pretty fine young person that went down a bad trail."

Tyler Pagenstecher of Mason was taken into custody immediately after the hearing and will be turned over to Ohio's Department of Youth Services. The agency ultimately will decide how long the 18-year-old Pagenstecher will be in prison, depending on his behavior.

"He's not going home today," Judge Thomas Lipps said, explaining that the charges against Pagenstecher were too serious for him to avoid prison time.

The Associated Press is naming Pagenstecher because of the seriousness of the crimes and because teen's identity quickly became public following the announcement of the charges against him when he was 17.

Authorities say Pagenstecher was one of the most prolific drug dealers in the Cincinnati area, a "little czar" in charge of six teenage lieutenants who helped him sell the marijuana to well-to-do students at two high schools.

Authorities believe Pagenstecher began selling the drugs when he was at least 15 and managed to stay under authorities' radar for a long time by not selling pot at school, but largely out of his home, where he lived with his single mother and older brother.

In court Monday, Pagenstecher stood up and apologized, saying that he didn't realize the severity of his actions.

"I understood that I would get in trouble but not to the level or extent this has become, and I sincerely regret all of this," said the pale, bespectacled, soft-spoken teen. "If I could take it all back, I would."

His mother, Daffney Pagenstecher, also spoke to the judge, saying her son "just thought he was using a recreational drug and selling it to his friends, and that was it."

"He wasn't out to become, you know, a big drug dealer," she said. "He didn't buy a new car. He didn't buy fancy clothes. He wasn't making the money that a drug dealer would make and flaunting it."

The 50-year-old school bus driver said she had no idea what her son had been up to before his arrest.