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Robbery, shooting probed
No arrests have been made in the robbery or shooting.
YOUNGSTOWN — Police are still sorting through details of the armed robbery of a local delivery driver in which one of the suspected robbers, a teenage boy, was shot.
According to police, a 44-year-old delivery driver for the Grub Club Restaurant on Southern Boulevard, was making a food delivery to a home in the 200 block of East Florida Avenue when a teenage boy wearing a tan jacket came out of the house reaching into his pockets as if looking for money. As the boy searched his pockets, two other teenage boys wearing black hoodies and bandannas over their faces, ran up on the porch and pulled out guns.
The delivery man told police the three teens then took the food and demanded all his cash, threatening to shoot him if he did not comply. The thieves took $20, car keys and a cell phone before running off the porch and up Florida Avenue.
Police reports say officers made it to the house within two minutes but could not locate the trio of thieves. While still talking to the delivery man, officers received a call about a teenage boy being shot — a boy fitting the description of one of the thieves.
Officers went to the boy’s East Florida Avenue home and spoke with his father, who said the boy ran into the house and said he had been shot in the side and upper left shoulder. Officers took note of clothing worn by the boy and fitting the description of the only unmasked person in the trio.
Officers brought the delivery man to the boy’s home and there the delivery man told police he was “100 percent sure” that the wounded teen was one of the three thieves who robbed him minutes earlier.
The boy told police he was shot at Hillman Street and Boston Avenue by one of two males walking with him. He would provide police no further details, reports said.
The boy was taken to St. Elizabeth Health Center and declared stable shortly after the shooting.
Police reports list several suspects in the robbery and subsequent shooting, but police have not made any arrests in either crime. Juvenile division detectives working on the case could not be reached to comment.
The Grub Club Restaurant was the victim of armed robbery earlier this year. Police are still looking for two men who robbed the business at gunpoint in mid-September.
Police said two employees at the business were taking out the trash in preparation for closing when two men walked up, asking if they could ask the employees a question.
One of the men waited outside the business, while the other one went into the store with the employees, pulled out a gun and demanded cash. He was handed about $500 from a safe, and the two men ran down nearby Hilton Avenue.
jgoodwin@vindy.com