Bazetta man in trouble

STAFF REPORT

WARREN — A Bazetta man who became an unwitting party to a double homicide by visiting a Warren drug house early this year has once again run into trouble while venturing into town.

Warren police received a visit from Irene Selep, 65, on Tuesday. Selep said her son, Jeff Selep, came home Monday evening without the dark blue 2007 Saturn Ion that she allowed him to drive.

Selep told his mother he walked home from the area of Fourth Street and Highland Avenue Southwest, near one of Warren’s low-income housing projects, because a man took the car from him there.

He told police he picked up a man about 20 years old in the parking lot of the KFC restaurant on West Market Street. Selep owed the man money for drugs, he said.

Selep felt threatened by the man, so he gave him the Saturn, valued at about $5,000, to settle the debt, Jeff told police. Police entered the vehicle into a stolen-vehicle database.

Selep is the same man who testified in Warren Municipal Court and Trumbull County Common Pleas Court in the criminal cases against Eugene Cumberbatch and Eugene Henderson.

Henderson, 26, and Cumberbatch, 26, were charged in the murders of Lloyd McCoy Jr., 11, and Marvin Chaney, 26, in a home on Wick Street Southeast on April 13.

Cumberbatch, 26, was later convicted in the deaths and received a 38-years-to-life prison sentence. Henderson’s trial is set for Feb. 1, 2010.

Selep testified that he had gone to Henderson’s house on Pearl Street in the Saturn on April 13 to buy drugs. While he was there, Henderson received permission to borrow the Saturn. He testified that Henderson had firearms with him when he left.

When Henderson, Cumberbatch and a third man, Marcus Yager, 23, returned, Cumberbatch and Henderson were arguing about a cell phone, an apparent reference to a cell phone found at the scene of the homicide.

Yager testified the Saturn was the vehicle Henderson drove to Wick Street when the killings took place.