Sunday, October 14, 2007
YOUNGSTOWN — More than seven years after Charise Harmon’s death from a gunshot wound, her family still mourns her passing and struggles to carry on with irreparably altered lives.
Their grief is compounded by their feeling that justice wasn’t served by the release of Harmon’s killer, Danielle Kramer of Austintown, who served just over seven years of combined county jail and state prison time.
“We don’t get to see her every day. When we come home from school, we don’t get to show her our report cards or our trophies,” said Javontae Wallace, 13, of Youngstown, one of Harmon’s five children.
Javontae is an accomplished football player, who brings home several trophies a year and aspires to be a professional football player. If he can’t fulfill his goal of joining the National Football League, Javontae said he wants to be a police officer.
The loss of their mother is especially painful for Javontae and three of his siblings: Shaquala Harmon, 14, of Youngstown; and Brian C. McClain Jr., 11, and Kavon McClain, 9, both of Campbell.
All four children witnessed the shooting as they sat in their mother’s car at the ages of 5, 6, 3 and 2, respectively, on May 24, 2000. Harmon’s fifth child, Shaniqua Wallace, now 17 and living in Columbus, was not present at the shooting scene outside an East Side convenience store.
Kramer told police she was driving her car at about 7:20 p.m. in the 1300 block of Shehy Street when she struck and heavily damaged the door of Harmon’s parked car, as Harmon, then 25 and living on Dignan Street, was opening it.
After Kramer stopped, Harmon threatened to beat Kramer up if Kramer didn’t have a driver’s license, reached into Kramer’s car after Kramer replied she did have a driver’s license, punched Kramer, pulled her hair and grabbed her car keys as she sat in her car, Kramer told police.
As she left the car, Kramer told police she grabbed from beneath her driver’s seat a .38-caliber pistol she had obtained for defense against her violent boyfriend, and the gun discharged as the struggle continued.
Harmon ran into the nearby convenience store, said she had been shot and needed help, collapsed and died within minutes at the scene after suffering a single gunshot wound to the chest, according to Youngstown Police and Mahoning County coroner’s reports.
After being treated for cuts and bruises on her hands and arms and a black and blue left eye, Kramer was jailed that evening on a murder charge.
A county grand jury indicted Kramer, then 27, on the murder charge, carrying a penalty of 15 years to life in prison, but she pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter and was released Aug. 7 after seven years and 68 days of incarceration.