YOUNGSTOWN Man charged in carjacking, theft

In a separate case, police are investigating damage at a rental property.
YOUNGSTOWN -- Kenneth Tyrone Banks Jr., 30, of North Gray Avenue has been charged with two counts of aggravated robbery in a carjacking and a gunpoint theft that took place within minutes of each other Monday.
Banks was arrested early Thursday on two felony warrants from Youngstown Municipal Court after city police stopped him as he drove on Stewart Avenue on the city's East Side. He also was charged with driving without an operator's license.
In the carjacking case, two women reported that they were driving on Bruno Street at Vestal Road, on the city's West Side, at 2:55 p.m. Wednesday when a masked man from inside a car stopped in front of them, approached their vehicle, held a gun to the passenger's neck and ordered them out of the car.
Five minutes later, police reports show, a 71-year-old man walking on Oakwood Avenue near North Hazelwood Avenue, also on the West Side, was approached by a driver asking directions when a woman came up behind him, showed a gun in her waistband and demanded his wallet. She fled in the auto with the man.
Vandalism case: Police also are investigating a complaint from a 45-year-old landlord that a former Silliman Street tenant had caused $35,000 in damage to the West Side house by spray-painting threats on walls and setting a fire.
The cost of damage, reported in August, had been determined Wednesday by an insurance company, he told police.
The man accused the 21-year-old former tenant and his friends of ransacking the home. There were broken windows, water damage to a ceiling from a broken toilet, damaged carpet, doors pulled off cabinets, and clothing and a pillow set on fire.
Walls throughout the house had been covered with red-and-blue spray-painted threats against the homeowner. The case was referred to the detective division and the city fire department arson unit.