ELYRIA — A Louisiana man convicted by a jury last week of molesting a 7-year-old girl while he lived in Lorain was sentenced to 12 years in prison Wednesday.

Tyrone “T.C.” Price could have faced life in prison had jurors also convicted him of four counts of rape he had faced. Price, 26, was convicted of four counts of gross sexual imposition.

Assistant Lorain County Prosecutor Chris Pierre had pushed for county Common Pleas Judge Christopher Rothgery to impose the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on Price at Wednesday’s hearing.

During the trial, Pierre told jurors that Price forced himself on the girl several times at her Reeves Avenue home in Lorain between April 2006 and February 2007.

The girl told a school official about Price when she and her family moved to Louisiana to get away from him. Pierre said during the trial that Price followed them south, and they eventually obtained a restraining order against him.

This won’t be the first time Price is locked up.

He spent time in an Ohio Department of Youth Services facility after pleading guilty in Lorain County Juvenile Court to tampering with evidence in a murder case.

Price, who was 16 at the time, helped move the body of 15-year-old Virginia Velez, who was strangled to death with shoelaces by Henry Maldonado, then 18.

Price was also classified as a sex offender during Wednesday’s hearing.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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