Man sentenced in shooting case

staff report

YOUNGSTOWN — A North Side man has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for a drive-by shooting, in which a bullet narrowly missed his estranged wife and her boyfriend.

Edward E. Taylor, 48, of Thornton Avenue, drew the sentence Thursday from Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court after a jury convicted him May 21 of two counts of felonious assault with gun specifications.

The sentence consists of two concurrent eight-year prison terms on the two counts of felonious assault, plus three consecutive years for the merged gun specifications.

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.

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, said Robert E. Bush Jr., chief of the criminal division in the county prosecutor’s office. There were no injuries.

“I’m innocent. I didn’t do it,” Taylor told the judge.

However, the judge said he was convinced that the jury listened closely to the evidence and his instructions and properly reached a guilty verdict.

Taylor’s lawyer, Jennifer L. McLaughlin, said an appeal will be filed.

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