A 24-year-old Dayton man who met a 15-year-old New Philadelphia girl online and drove her 500 miles to Wisconsin will serve 180 days in the Tuscarawas County Jail and five years of probation, after a judge said Ohio law barred him from imposing a state prison sentence. Jordan Romine pleaded guilty to low-level felony counts of endangering children and interference with custody, and Judge Ryan Styer also fined him $1,000, ordered 250 hours of community service, and forbade him from having any contact with the girl or her family.
According to WJER, Romine had already spent 113 days in jail, leaving him with roughly two months left to serve. Tuscarawas County Sheriff's officials reported that Romine was a married father from Dayton, and that he had lied about his age when he first began talking to the girl online. Investigators say the two connected online and that he ultimately left with her in the middle of the night on April 26, setting off a rapid multi-state search.
A Three-Month Deception That Reached the Girl's Front Door
The two had connected online before her disappearance and had even met her parents in person after falsely presenting himself as a 16-year-old, according to WJER's earlier reporting. That deception gave him a level of trust and access that set the stage for the April 26 disappearance, when the teen left home at midnight. Her family reported her missing to authorities at 12:44 p.m. that day, and she was located roughly 500 miles away in Wisconsin less than three hours later, at 3:35 p.m., per the same account.
The speed of the recovery came down to technology. Law enforcement used license plate reading cameras to track Romine's vehicle into Wisconsin, and authorities apprehended him and recovered the teen at a highway rest area in Walworth County, where he was initially jailed while awaiting extradition to Ohio, WJER reported. The recovery illustrated how license plate-reading technology helped law enforcement track a vehicle across state lines.
From Sexual Conduct Charge to a Reduced Plea
A Tuscarawas County grand jury indicted Romine in June on felony charges of interference with custody and unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, before he ultimately struck a plea agreement that reduced those counts to child endangering and custody interference. Following his arrest in Wisconsin, Romine was extradited back to Ohio and booked into the Tuscarawas County Jail, the outlet's coverage noted. It remains unclear from available records exactly what led prosecutors to accept the reduced plea in place of the original sexual conduct charge.
Crossing state lines with the teen carried its own legal consequence. Under Ohio Revised Code § 2919.23, interference with custody is normally classified as a first-degree misdemeanor, but the offense escalates to a fifth-degree felony once a minor is removed from the state of Ohio, according to the Ohio Revised Code. That single fact — driving the teen into Wisconsin — is what pushed Romine's case into felony territory in the first place.
Why State Prison Was Off the Table
Judge Styer noted in his judgment entry that he was restricted from sending Romine to state prison, and that restriction traces directly to Ohio's sentencing structure for low-level felonies. Under Ohio Revised Code § 2929.13(B), non-violent fourth- and fifth-degree felony convictions carry a statutory presumption favoring community control sanctions over prison time for defendants without prior felony records, according to Yonas and Phillabaum LLC. That presumption is why the sentence landed on local jail time, probation, community service and a fine rather than a term behind bars.
The sentence was handed down by a judge with deep familiarity with the county's criminal justice system. Presiding Judge Ryan Styer took the Tuscarawas County Common Pleas Court bench in March following his appointment by Governor Mike DeWine, after serving as the county's elected prosecuting attorney, according to River News.
How the Case Fits National Runaway Patterns
The case involved a missing youth whose disappearance ended in a rapid recovery. Romine's case stands apart for how quickly technology closed the gap between disappearance and recovery, even as the two had connected online before the teen ever left home. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, its CyberTipline received 1.4 million reports concerning online enticement in 2025, including more than 800 reports in which an offender traveled to meet a child. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said that in 2024, the REPORT Act expanded mandatory reporting to include online enticement as a type of child sexual exploitation.
