Thrown bottle may have led to E. Side slaying

Two spent shotgun shells were found in the street.

By PATRICIA MEADE

VINDICATOR CRIME REPORTER

YOUNGSTOWN — A glass bottle tossed at a white SUV may be the act of aggression that led to a deadly drive-by shooting.

“He said he’d be right back, he just went to his sister’s to check on his niece and nephew,” said 47-year-old Hazel Napier, holding back tears. “He said he’d be right back. He said he’d be right back.”

Her son, Terrance E. Brown, 27, was gunned down outside his sister’s apartment in the 1400 block of Woodcrest Avenue around 10 p.m. Tuesday. Brown was shot in the head as he attempted to enter the East Side apartment to escape the gunfire.

“He was a good person. He had been staying with his girlfriend but was moving in here, just for a while,” Napier said, sitting on a large hassock inside her McBride Street apartment, directly behind the Woodcrest Avenue murder scene. “He said he was going to find a job and get his life together. He never caused any problems.”

15th homicide

Brown is the city’s 15th homicide of the year, compared with 12 at this time last year.

Witnesses told police that the gunfire came from a white SUV with four occupants. Two spent shotgun shells were found in the street, police said.

Capt. Kenneth Centorame, chief of detectives, said it’s possible another weapon was fired, too, and more will be known once the autopsy report is done.

Minutes before the gunfire, a group of men had been standing on steps near Brown’s sister’s apartment. As the SUV went by, someone in the group lobbed a glass bottle at the vehicle, a witness told police.

The SUV then clipped the rear bumper of an old van parked on Woodcrest. The van driver, who was pulling away from the curb, said the SUV turned around at McBride.

As the SUV traveled on Woodcrest, a passenger hung out a window and fired a long gun, reports show.

A hurled bottle

Napier said she was told the same sequence of events — that the shooting started after someone threw a bottle at the SUV. “That’s stupid stuff,” she said.

Centorame said if Brown was killed because someone hurled a bottle — a sign of disrespect — the shooting response was uncalled for. He said it’s too early to say if Brown was the target or the victim of a random shot.

Brown, who had no criminal record, had no obvious reason to be the target, Centorame said.

The chief of detectives said Detective Sgt. Patrick Kelly was checking out reports that the SUV was in the neighborhood because one of the occupants was visiting his girlfriend on McBride.

The first officers on the scene spoke to four men a witness said had been standing outside when the bottle was thrown. The men said they weren’t around at the time of the shooting.

Brown’s mother told police that she saw several men run through the parking lot near her apartment.

meade@vindy.com