YOUNGSTOWN 86-year-old robbed, killed in her home
The victim's daughter found her mother's bloodied body.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- An 86-year-old woman, an apparent robbery victim, was found beaten to death in her Brownlee Woods residence, police said.
The body of the victim, Helen Koscak, 3511 Belden Ave., was found on her bed at 1:10 p.m. Saturday, bloodied, unresponsive and not breathing, by her daughter who came to her home after trying unsuccessfully several times to reach her by telephone.
Koscak and her daughter, who lives in Hubbard, had last spoken by phone at 10:45 p.m. Friday.
"I'm bewildered, and it just stuns me to know that something like that would happen in this area," said Councilman John A. Nittoli, D-7th.
"That is a decent area, but I think it should be patrolled a little more often" by police. Nittoli also is president of the Buckeye Eyes and Ears Block Watch group in the Brownlee Woods area.
Police are calling the case an aggravated murder and aggravated robbery. It is the city's 15th homicide this year and the first since Sept. 23.
Police said the victim appeared to have been beaten with an unidentified weapon in the face and had a bruise on her right arm.
Low-crime neighborhood
When the victim's daughter entered the house, she saw change scattered, her mother's wallet on the kitchen floor and the kitchen door window broken before finding her mother in an upstairs bedroom, she told police. A cellar window leading to a closed-off coal room also had been broken.
Nittoli said the area is generally a low-crime neighborhood. Nittoli, who lives on Mount Vernon Avenue, about six blocks from the crime scene, said he can't recall another homicide in the neighborhood in the 42 years he's lived there.
Nittoli said, however, he had recently received complaints from neighborhood residents about young men gathering in the evenings and drinking at Belden and Windsor avenues near a convenience store. The men were reportedly parking their cars on both sides of the street in that area, making it difficult for motorists to pass through, he said.
Nittoli said he intends to speak Monday morning with Police Chief Robert Bush and the beat patrol officers who cover the neighborhood and seek additional police patrols.
"It's starting to become a nuisance area," he said.
milliken@vindy.com