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Decision disappoints group
By ED RUNYAN
WARREN
The commander of the task force that has been heading up drug raids in the city since last fall says that the decision of a Trumbull County grand jury not to indict seven people on heroin-trafficking charges hurts his agency’s efforts but won’t stop them.
“We’ll do the same thing again. If we have probable cause to arrest, we’ll arrest again,” said Lt. Jeff Orr of the Trumbull Ashtabula Group Law Enforcement Task Force.
Orr said it’s impossible to know what led the grand jury to refuse to indict the individuals because their proceedings are conducted in private.
Chuck Morrow, an assistant county prosecutor who handled some of the cases, likewise said he doesn’t know what led to the grand jurors’ decisions and cannot comment on individual cases.
The task force has conducted a handful of drug raids in Warren since last fall. The organization was staffed by sheriff deputies during the first several years of its existence and did most of its work in rural areas of Trumbull and Ashtabula counties.
Earlier this month, the Warren Police Department assigned one of its officers to work on the task force permanently.
A grand jury last week decided not to indict seven of the 10 people arrested Sept. 15 during the raid on a house on West Market Street near Nevada Avenue in Warren.
All seven people were charged with trafficking in heroin, a first-degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Among them were three men from Detroit — Christopher Davis, 39; Gshannon McColor Jr., 21; James B. McColor, 30.
A fourth Detroit man arrested in the raid, Michael A. Travis, 30, was found shot to death in the backyard of a house on Washington Street Northwest in Warren in January. Police have not made any arrests in his death, which was ruled a homicide.
The grand jury also chose not to indict four others in the alleged drug-peddling operation: Darius E. Talley Jr., 35, of Warren; Steven M. Nezbeth, 40, of Southington; Kayla McTheny, 19, of Niles; and Salena Jones, 19, of Warren.
The only convictions in the case were for Twila Nezbeth, 50, of Southington, who pleaded guilty to felony heroin possession in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court last month and was sentenced to five years of probation; and Jennifer Lackner, 24, of Warren, convicted in Warren Municipal Court of misdemeanor drug possession, fined $500 and court costs and placed on three years’ probation.
Three juvenile females were arrested during the raid and turned over to juvenile authorities.
Orr showed the news media heroin, crack cocaine, cocaine, OxyContin and marijuana that were confiscated from the home the day of the raid, which followed a one-month investigation that included undercover drug buys.
Orr said he was not at liberty to discuss which of the defendants sold drugs to authorities during the investigation.
Orr described the house as a “large [drug] distribution point with a lot of people coming and going all hours of the day.”
About 16 pit bulls — half adult dogs and half puppies — also were found in the house and were euthanized later at the Trumbull County Dog Pound.