One of the two women involved in the September 2020 escape from the Highland County Common Pleas Courtroom by Nickolaus Garrison, 34, Hillsboro, received a three-year community control sentence Monday by visiting Judge Daniel Hogan.
The 18-month prison sentence that Alicia M. Ralston, 32, Chillicothe, could have received on the complicity to escape conviction was suspended by Hogan, with instructions in the court’s conditions of supervision ordering that she continue in efforts to obtain her GED, and successfully complete substance abuse disorder treatment through the Georgia Harris House and all recommended aftercare.
“I’d just want to say I’d like to complete my treatment and move on to the transition house,” she told Hogan during her sentencing hearing.
Court records showed that she entered a guilty plea to the third-degree felony charge on March 1.
Ralston had been charged along with Amber Ward, 28, Hillsboro, in the indictments returned against them that they, “did aid and abet” and “did harbor and conceal” Garrison in the days following his dramatic escape from the courtroom in Hillsboro.
Garrison bolted from the Highland County Courthouse Sept. 22 in an incident that was captured on video after Judge Rocky Coss sentenced him to prison on an aggravated possession of methamphetamine conviction.
A Highland County sheriff’s deputy was injured when he dove over a stairway railing in an attempt to prevent Garrison’s escape.
Less than four days later, in the early morning hours of Friday, Sept. 25, Garrison was apprehended without incident at a Clinton County motel.
Court records showed that Ward was granted two medical furloughs and was transported to Highland District Hospital for medical issues on March 6 and March 21, with instructions that upon discharge, she was to immediately report back to the Highland County Jail.
Reach Tim Colliver at 937-402-2571.
