Motive sought in killing

The homicide is the first in the city since Aug. 8.

YOUNGSTOWN — The city’s 24th homicide victim had a history of drug convictions and was set for trial in January on multiple counts of raping a little girl.

The motive for Ivan Cruz’s being shot to death could be drug-related or connected to the rape case, said Capt. Kenneth Centorame, chief of detectives. He said Detective Sgt. Ramon Cox, lead investigator, is looking at both as possible motives.

Cruz, 27, of South Pearl Street, was shot dead at Center and Hickory streets on the East Side around 4:45 a.m. Sunday. Witnesses heard six shots. The car he was driving, a 2000 green Cadillac Seville, was towed from the scene.

It was the city’s first homicide since Aug. 8. There were 21 homicides at this time last year.

The location on Center is close to where Cruz and 22-year-old Antonio Gibbs were arrested on drug trafficking charges in 2004 when members of the vice squad used a search warrant to enter 228 Center and collected more than 200 packaged-for-sale bags of marijuana. Cruz and Gibbs were convicted, records show. Cruz has other drug convictions, the most recent in July for possession of marijuana.

Gibbs, of Austintown, was among five witnesses to the shooting on Sunday, Centorame said. Gibbs also has a gun conviction.

Rape indictment

In May, a Mahoning County grand jury indicted Cruz on six counts of raping a little girl. Police said the rapes took place over a span of two years, beginning when the girl was 8 years old.

The South Side girl, who’d spent two days with a godmother in April, cried and expressed fear about returning home, saying her mother’s live-in boyfriend, Cruz, had been molesting her for two years, reports show. The girl’s mother then took the child to a hospital for a rape examination.

When charged with rape in May, Cruz’s address had shifted to his family’s South Pearl Street home.

The rape trial was scheduled for Jan. 14 in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

The location of Sunday’s homicide, meanwhile, is not far up the steep Center Street hill from where a 29-year-old woman, shot in the neck on July 31 as she drove, died, as did her unborn fetus. Her 8-year-old son, who had been shot in the head, died the next day. The father of her unborn fetus is charged with the crimes. The shooting took place across the street from his girlfriend’s residence.