City shootings kill 2, injure 4

One victim played dead while the gunman reloaded. Another fled. Two more were critically injured.

STAFF report

YOUNGSTOWN — After shooting five people in a Falls Avenue home, the shooter reloaded, walked up to one of the victims as she screamed and fired the gun at her head until she stopped moving.

Theresa Harris, no age or address available, was killed in the home early Saturday, the first of two homicides in the city that day.

The other homicide victim, Hylen L. Cash, 21, of Sunshine Avenue, was killed around 11:40 a.m. on Ayers Street after an argument that witnesses told police was over heroin.

Travis Donaldson, 18, of Truesdale Road, was charged with aggravated murder and felony fleeing in Cash’s death. He was arrested on South Avenue shortly after the shooting after the car in which he was a passenger fled from police.

The driver, Tasha Martinez, 25, of South Bruce Street, was charged with felony fleeing.

The other four victims in the Falls shooting were taken to St. Elizabeth Health Center. The hospital wouldn’t release information about their conditions, but the police report said that two of the victims, Frederick Howze, 68, the home’s owner, and Kawon North, 20, of Lakewood Avenue, were in critical condition and rushed to surgery after the shootings. Howze suffered wounds to the chest while North’s were to the head.

Police arrived at the Falls address to find Bobby Miller, 19, of Ridgelawn Avenue, stumbling down the driveway and bleeding from the back of the head. According to a police report, Miller told an officer, “They’re all dead. He shot them all.”

Miller told police that he and the other victims were in the home around 1 a.m. when they heard loud knocking at the door.

Howze opened the door and several shots rang out. Howze fell to the floor. The gunman, described as a thin black man, unknown to the victims, was wearing a grey jogging suit then walked into the room, shooting everyone.

Miller told police that he played dead when he fell to the floor after feeling something strike the back of his head. The shooter then ran out of bullets and stopped to reload.

Harris, who had been shot in the chest, was screaming at the gunman to please leave, Miller told police, but when the gunman finished reloading, he walked up to her, put the gun to her head and shot her several times until she stopped moving.

Another victim, Immanuel McGee, 24, of Ridgelawn, told police he was struck in the arm/shoulder area and fled the house while the shooter reloaded.

McGee ran to a friend’s home and she took him to the hospital.

This marks the city’s 10th and 11th homicides of the year. At this time in 2008, 14 homicides had been reported.