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Firefighter shot, cops find part of ear at scene
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Police say the shooting was a drug deal gone awry.
YOUNGSTOWN — Bernard Brown didn’t realize the city firefighter he ran to help had been shot until he pulled up the young man’s shirt.
“He had two bullet holes in his stomach, one in his leg and his face was bloody,” Brown said Wednesday afternoon, standing with his wife, Ardis, across from the shooting scene on North Fruit Street. “He was coherent, but he’d lost a lot of blood.”
Andre “Dre” Johnson, 26, was in critical condition at St. Elizabeth Health Center. Police found him collapsed on the sidewalk across from his home at 28 N. Fruit St. around 12:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Police are calling the shooting a drug deal gone awry.
Johnson, according to a police report, identified the two suspects as only “Moose” and “Don Juan.” He said they are acquaintances through a cousin and live in Warren.
Inside Johnson’s home, which he shares with a roommate, police found a duffel bag that they said contained marijuana and plastic bags. A shoe box of cash was also discovered in the residence.
Lt. Mark Milstead said a search warrant was obtained for the house at 28 N. Fruit and the Vice Squad would be called because suspected marijuana was found inside.
Fire Chief John J. O’Neill Jr., who showed up at the crime scene, went to the emergency room to check on Johnson. “They took him for a CAT scan and then into surgery,” O’Neill said.
The chief described Johnson as a very personable young man who was hired June 17, 2006, and assigned to Fire Station No. 12 on McGuffey Road.
Ardis Brown said she and her husband were at her mother’s house on North Fruit to do some cleaning when the shooting happened. The Browns — she’s 53, he’s 54 — live on Springdale Avenue.
“I was on the porch, shaking rugs, when I heard a loud muffler and saw a car pulling out of Dre’s driveway,” Bernard Brown said. “Then I saw Dre laying in the driveway. He said they tried to rob him for his gold chain.”
Brown said there were likely two men in the rusty brown Oldsmobile or Buick he saw leaving. The vehicle also displayed collision damage to the passenger side door, the report said.
Milstead said the car ended up at Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital and Warren police held it for Youngstown police. He said a piece of ear found at the shooting scene was taken to the Warren hospital to see if it could be reattached to the man who had been at Johnson’s house.
Detective William Blanchard said he surmised the suspect’s ear was bitten off.
Brown said he didn’t hear gunfire, first thinking the blood on Johnson’s face was from a fight. Brown found two bullet holes in Johnson’s stomach and did what he could to fashion a tourniquet to stop the blood coming from a bullet hole in the young man’s leg.
The Browns called Johnson’s roommate, Travis Dock, a Youngstown State University student, to tell him what happened. Dock rushed home, arriving before an ambulance crew took Johnson to St. Elizabeth’s.
Police placed Dock in a cruiser to question him, first making sure they retrieved the school book bag he dropped in his hurry to check on his friend.
“Boy, oh boy, this is ridiculous,” Ardis Brown said of the shooting as police canvassed the neighborhood looking for witnesses. “Andre is a real good young man.”