Speakers: Prevent another tragedy

By Ed Runyan | June 2, 2009 at 12:05a.m.

Lloyd McCoy Jr. vigil

Many small children accept violence as a fact of life in the city, the superintendent of schools said.

WARREN — When three young men headed out April 13 in a borrowed car to kill Marvin Chaney on Wick Street Southeast over some money, they lacked one thing: someone to tell them to stop.

“Who told them to stop?” Warren Detective Wayne Mackey asked a large audience Monday night at W.D. Packard Music Hall.

“Nobody,” he answered.

“There was plenty of stimulus to do it [commit the homicide]. Just turn on the TV on,” he said.

Mackey was speaking of Eugene Henderson, Eugene Cumberbatch and Marcus Yager of Warren, the three men charged with killing 11-year-old Lloyd McCoy Jr. and Chaney, his sister’s boyfriend.

Henderson and Cumberbatch are believed to have gotten out of the car in front of Chaney’s house about 9:50 p.m. and opened fire on the house, which contained Lloyd, Chaney and others. Yager is believed to have stayed in the car without firing a weapon.

Mackey was one of a dozen speakers who urged the crowd to be peacemakers and to help prevent another tragedy from taking an innocent life.

Through much of the commemoration, organized by Shari Harrell, executive director of the YWCA of Warren and a Warren school board member, about 10 police officers and adult probation officers stood behind the speakers at the podium.

As Mackey spoke, he pointed to the officers and said, “We up here are not the answer. We are a response to the problem. The answer is sitting out there in those chairs. The case was solved because people like you had had enough. Criminals had had enough. They called me and said, ‘We can’t stand for this,’’’ Mackey said.

Vince Peterson, a county probation officer, told the young people that criminals who warn young people that they should not “snitch” don’t stand by what they say.

“These folks say don’t snitch, but when they’re in trouble and they need something, they talk to us,” he said. “Talk to police, a teacher, a counselor,” he added.

Peterson asked the fathers, mothers and kids separately to “stand to your feet and say ‘No more.’” The crowd followed his instructions, creating a loud chorus as each group yelled, “No more.”

Henderson and Cumberbatch are charged with aggravated murder in the two deaths. Yager is charged with complicity to murder. Their case has been bound over to a Trumbull County grand jury.

Superintendent Dr. Kathryn Hellweg said it hurts her to drive through the city and see the conditions in which so many Warren schoolchildren live.

“I am sickened that we seem to take so little pride in our community,” she said. “I drive through the neighborhoods of some of our children, and I cry. Boarded-up houses, broken-out windows, trash littering vacant lots.

“I see our kindergartners accepting gunshots and violent fights as normal events of daily life in their neighborhoods,” she said.

“We have a responsibility today to eliminate the blight that breeds violence and to build a positive future here.”

Hellweg noted the district unveiled a new effort last week designed to teach Warren teachers how to better support students by addressing issues of diversity and inclusion.

Ron Clark of the movie “The Ron Clark Story,” about a teacher’s handling of low-achieving students in Harlem, will come to Warren in August to help the district implement Clark’s Essential 55 qualities to help students be successful in life and in the classroom, Hellweg added.

The organization Community Collaborative Against Violence was formed to organize the event and continue activities aimed at making the community safer.