Post a pic of the bottom (plastron) of the turtle. I'll tell you now, it's not a Painted turtle. It is a type of slider. Either a Red-eared slider or a Yellowbelly slider. Look on the side of the turtles neck region when it's head is fully extended. If it's a Red-ear, you'll obviously see a red stripe mixed in with the yellow ones. A Yellowbelly will have no spots on the plastron, just a solid yellow belly. Sliders can sometimes be difficult to identify the different sub-species, cause there are so many of them. It boils down to, first; Look in a good book, I highly recommend the Peterson North American Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians Eastern/mid western edition. Excellent book. Then by using the process of elimination, count out the species that do not naturally occur with in your range (The range maps in the back of the book are useful for narrowing down/eliminating unidentified species). The species listed as occuring in your range each have in this book, a set of ways to narrow down what it might be with species that look very similar to one another.
