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Joe Kaluza recalls being shot
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Joseph Kaluza
YOUNGSTOWN — When a blue car cut him off on South Avenue as he was carrying the eatery’s $300 bank deposit on the morning of March 24, KFC Manager Joseph Kaluza said he knew something was wrong.
Kaluza said in trial testimony this morning that he immediately called his area manager on his cellular phone.
“I told my area manager I thought I was going to get robbed,” Kaluza testified, adding that he also called 911 to report the accident. Kaluza said he asked the area manager to go to the store because he had been in a crash.
The woman driving the blue car, who wore a pink coat, got out and asked to use his cellular phone, then quickly returned it to him, Kaluza testified.
As soon as the woman returned the phone to him, Kaluza remembers getting shot. “As soon as I got shot, I couldn’t move,’’ said Kaluza testified in Mahoning County Common Pleas court from his motorized wheelchair, with a medical aide at his side.
Kaluza then recalled hearing the gunman tell the woman driving the blue car to leave the scene, which she did.
The gunman then put the red station wagon Kaluza was driving in drive and steered it to a nearby house, then put it in park and removed the bank deposit bag from the console, Kaluza testified.
“Where’s the rest of the money or I’m going to shoot you in the head?” Kaluza quoted the robber saying. Kaluza testified there was no more money in the car.
A man arrived in a construction truck to ask if everything was OK, and the gunman said yes, and the construction truck drove away.
The gunman continued looking for more money in the car and tore off a KFC bag being used as a trash bag in the car and left the scene, Kaluza said.
Kaluza recalled an ambulance took him to St. Elizabeth Health Center.
He was the first witness as testimony began today in the jury trial of two suspects in the robbery and shooting that left Kaluza paralyzed from the neck down.
The robber only got $300 because it was the day after Easter and business had been slow on Easter Day, Kaluza said. On a normal Sunday, the receipts to be deposited would have been $1,000 to $1,500, Kaluza testified.
Kaluza said he followed his usual routine of having an employee hand him the bank deposit bag as he drove through KFC’s drive-up window.
The trial of Taran D. Helms and his girlfriend, Hattie L. Gilbert, is before Judge Timothy E. Franken of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
Jurors will not visit the crime scene. Neither the prosecution not the defense requested a jury view, Judge Franken said.
Jurors were shown WRTA bus surveillance video showing the blue Saturn leaving a muffler shop across the street from the KFC Kaluza managed at South Avenue and Indianola Road.
The video from the bus, which was southbound on South Avenue, shows the blue car cutting off the stationwagon at South and Hilton avenues and being rearended by the red stationwagon in front of the bus.
The prosecution plans to call about 27 witnesses to testify.
Both defendants are charged with attempted murder, felonious assault, aggravated robbery and kidnapping, with firearm specifications to all counts. Both face between six and 50 years in prison if convicted of all counts and specifications.
Helms, 23, of West Hylda Avenue, is charged with robbing and shooting Kaluza. Police said Gilbert, 20, of East Judson Avenue, drove her car in the staged crash that preceded the robbery and shooting on the city’s South Side.
Kaluza, manager of the KFC on South Avenue, was driving south on South Avenue when a car cut him off and caused a crash, which was captured by a Western Reserve Transit Authority bus camera, police said.
The gunman pushed Kaluza’s car a short distance into a Hilton Avenue driveway, demanded money and received the bank deposit. Kaluza was shot in the neck.
The case is being prosecuted by Kasey C. Shidel and Ralph Rivera, assistant county prosecutors. Helms’ lawyer is John B. Juhasz. Gilbert’s lawyer is Martin E. Yavorcik.