Business owner is slain at home

The homicide is Youngstown's 20th of the year, which tops the 2003 total.
YOUNGSTOWN -- Benedict D. Santana died in a bedroom but not peacefully in his sleep.
Santana, 36, of 3527 Neilson Ave., was shot at least twice in the back and was dead when the mother of his three children found him around 1:30 a.m. Saturday.
When police arrived, 35-year-old Elaine Gonzalez told them she had taken two children with her to a hospital and left their 3-year-old daughter asleep on the couch. The little girl was still asleep when Gonzalez returned home.
Gonzalez said she knew something was wrong when she noticed the side door ajar. In a second-floor bedroom, she found Santana, in his underwear, lying face down and not breathing.
One of the victim's daughters went screaming to a friend's home for help. The 21-year-old friend went to the house on Neilson and tried unsuccessfully to revive Santana by performing CPR.
Gunshots
Police said Santana was shot twice in the back and another bullet grazed his back. Officers found a .40-caliber slug near a bedroom wall, a .40-caliber casing on the stair landing and another .40-caliber casing near the bed.
"I'm just not up to talking yet," Gonzalez said at the pale blue house on Neilson early Saturday. "Maybe later."
The victim's pants, found in the bedroom, had $534 in a pocket and his driver's license, police said. Santana owned DBS Tire Service on South Avenue, reports show.
Reaction
"He was my best friend, a guy with a big heart -- everybody loved him," Rick Fry, manager at the tire shop, said Saturday. "He'd go out in the middle of the night to help people."
Fry said the killer took Santana's dream away. "That's why we're here today [at the shop], to keep the dream going for his kids."
He said Santana was going to open a car lot on South Avenue and they had been working together to get the business going.
Fry said he learned about the death of his friend from Gonzalez.
He sees it as a robbery gone bad, or maybe someone who wanted to kill his friend. He had no idea of a motive, saying things like this so often happen to good people.
"He tried to get away and they shot him," Fry said.
Evidence
The shooter broke a side window to get into the two-story house. Police found footprints on a picnic table near the broken window.
Santana's bedroom door, which had been kicked in, also had footprints on it.
Homicide detectives, crime lab officers and a coroner's investigator were called to the scene. Lt. Robin Lees, police department spokesman, said Saturday that he had no new information on the homicide.
Neilson, near East Midlothian Boulevard on the city's South Side, is typically a quiet street in a neighborhood of homes built in the early 1900s.
Santana is the city's 20th homicide victim of the year and the third in two weeks. All were killed on the South Side. Last year, the city recorded 19 homicides in all, with the final one taking place Dec. 12, 2003.
On Dec. 5, Jerome R. Miller Jr., 32, of Mistletoe Avenue was ambushed at 6:20 p.m. as he waited in his car to place an order at Gina's Drive-Thru, 1942 Glenwood Ave. On Dec. 13, Anthony Brock, 34, of Youngstown was shot to death inside a 2000 Hyundai in the 700 block of Cambridge Street when a kidnapping went haywire.