Lawyer: Driver recruited gunman to shoot for him

‘Don’t feel sorry for him,’ the prosecutor told the jury.

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — Damon K. Clark recruited and drove a gunman to fire at a group of people, with one of the shots striking and killing 3-year-old Cherish M. Moreland last May 5 on the city’s East Side, a prosecutor said.

“Don’t feel sorry for him,” Robert Andrews, assistant Mahoning County prosecutor, said of Clark. “The person who set this up is the defendant,” he told the jurors Tuesday in his opening statement in Clark’s trial.

“He was not tough enough to do the shooting himself,” so he recruited his co-defendant, Stoney Williams, to be the gunman and drove Williams to the 1400 block of Stewart Avenue, where Williams fired the shots, Andrews said.

“When you shoot at a group of people, your intention is to kill somebody,’’ Andrews asserted. “We can’t prove who he wanted to kill,” Andrews said, adding that the shooting wasn’t random or accidental. “No one is alleging that Cherish Moreland was the one who was supposed to be killed,” Andrews added.

Clark, 23, of Dogwood Lane, is on trial before Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on two counts of aggravated murder, one count of murder and one count of improperly discharging a firearm at or into a habitation. Gun specifications apply to all counts.

One of the aggravated murder counts against Clark and Williams alleges they purposely caused Cherish’s death with prior calculation and design, and the other specifies that Cherish was under age 13. The murder count alleges the girl was killed when shots were fired at a house.

The trial of Williams, 19, of Dorothy Avenue, on the same charges, is to begin before Judge Sweeney on April 14.

“Everyone’s going to feel sympathy for the fact that that little 3-year-old girl is dead, and that it wasn’t her fault,” Clark’s lawyer, John B. Juhasz, told the jurors.

But Juhasz reminded them that Clark, not Williams, is now on trial, and Juhasz asked them not to make up their minds until they hear all of the testimony and the judge’s instructions.

“There are substantial and reasonable doubts about some of the elements of the state’s case,” Juhasz said.

Clark and two of his friends were asked to leave a Stewart Avenue house because they were drunk, police reports said. A few minutes later, Clark returned to Stewart Avenue at 11:08 p.m., driving the car from which Williams fired twice at a group of people standing outside, striking the Hilton Avenue girl once in the head, police reports said.

Darryl Mason Jr., 17, of Parkcliff Avenue, testified Tuesday that he was an unarmed back-seat passenger, when he heard Clark, who was driving, ask Williams, “Stoney, are you ready?” just before Clark yelled something out the car window as the car approached the group standing outdoors on Stewart Avenue. Mason said he couldn’t discern what Clark was yelling.

Mason, who was not charged with any crime, said he then saw Williams rise from the front passenger seat, sit on the passenger door window sill and fire two shots over the roof of the car.

Williams is a son of Willie “Flip” Williams, who was executed in October 2005 for the 1991 shooting deaths of four men in Youngstown.

milliken@vindy.com