North Side man guilty of felonious assaults

The bullet went through the driver’s headrest of an occupied car.

staff report

YOUNGSTOWN — A North Side man is facing five to 19 years in prison after an eight-woman, four-man jury convicted him of two counts of felonious assault with gun specifications in a drive-by shooting, in which a bullet narrowly missed his estranged wife and her boyfriend.

Edward E. Taylor, 48, of Thornton Avenue, was found guilty Wednesday afternoon after three hours of deliberations in a trial that began Monday before Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Last Nov. 6, Taylor fired from a car at his estranged wife, Carolene and her boyfriend, Daniel Boggs, who were in a car that had stopped on Hudson Avenue to pick up the Taylors’ 16-year-old son, said Robert E. Bush Jr., chief of the criminal division of the county prosecutor’s office.

The bullet went through the rear window and the driver’s headrest before lodging in the floor of the car Boggs was driving as both occupants ducked, Bush said.

Carolene Taylor testified she saw her estranged husband shoot into the car she and Boggs occupied.

Boggs testified he didn’t see Taylor shoot but recognized Taylor’s voice when Taylor told his son, who hadn’t yet entered the car Boggs was driving, to duck just before the shot was fired.

No gun was recovered, and police were unable to identify what type of gun was fired because the bullet slug was flattened, Bush said.

Taylor’s lawyer, Jennifer L. McLaughlin, said she’d ask the judge to impose concurrent sentences on the two felonious assault counts. She also said Taylor maintains his innocence and an appeal will be filed.

Taylor, who remains jailed awaiting sentencing, is the father of Edward Taylor II, 19, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison last week in the Nov. 18 robbery and shooting death of James E. Dow and the wounding of another man on the city’s North Side.