Resident defends neighborhood against trouble-makers

Photo by: Ed Runyan

Photo

TOOK A STAND: Eric Collins, 31, of Washington Street in Warren, describes the confrontation he had with three young men Wednesday near his home.

By Ed Runyan

‘I’d do it again. I’m just glad we caught them,’ the Warren man said.

WARREN — When Eric Collins saw three young men hanging out at Washington Street and Vine Avenue Northeast near his home about 1:15 p.m. Wednesday, he did what he regularly does: He asked them to “move along.”

What he did next was more dangerous.

After the three started giving him some “tough-guy talk,” including threats, Collins, 31, got into his car and followed them to the next corner to take their picture with a cell phone — to give to police.

That’s when things got really hairy.

Collins caught up to the men at Vine and Belmont Street, and one of the men threatened to shoot Collins. Collins scoffed, saying, “You probably got a gun that doesn’t even work.”

That’s when Carl D. Washington, 21, of Peace Avenue Southwest, pulled a shotgun out of his pants and pointed it at Collins, according to a police report.

“He pointed it at my belly. He cocked the joker and shot it right beside me, straight down Belmont Street,” Collins said Thursday.

The three men fled on foot, but with Collins’ help, Warren police tracked them through backyards on Washington Street until Patrolman Terrence Edington noticed someone reach out the rear door of a house on Olive Street, grab a shotgun near the rear porch and take it inside.

A woman in the house on Olive told police that Washington came in through an unlocked rear door uninvited, carrying a shotgun, and then went to the basement.

Police arrested him without incident, and Collins identified Washington as the man who fired the gun.

Washington was video-arraigned from the Trumbull County jail Thursday. He pleaded innocent to felonious assault and aggravated burglary, with the burglary charge stemming from his entering the house on Olive Street. He was ordered held on $250,000 bond.

Collins said he’s been living on Washington Street for more than a year, even though there are drug dealers and prostitutes using the sidewalks around his home for their trade.

“I chase them out of here all the time,” Collins said, adding that he regularly calls police to tell them about the illegal trade.

“I’ve been talking to police,” he said, adding that he is a bouncer at a bar, has three children and wants to continue living there.

One of his kids had just come home that day because of an early release from school, and another one was coming into the house when he noticed the three men at the corner. Collins said he had never seen these three before.

Asked whether he thinks he did the right thing by confronting the men, Collins said yes.

“I’d do it again,” he said. “I’m just glad we caught them.”

Sgt. Jeff Cole of the Warren Police Department, however, said no citizen should risk his life the way Collins did.

“Don’t do that. If you have concerns about drug dealing, call the Warren Police Department. That’s our job to do that,” he said. “He could have easily gotten himself killed. We want you to report suspicious activity, not confront suspected drug dealers.”

A neighbor of Collins’, Bruce Ramey, who has lived on Washington since 1984, says Collins is not the only resident who has taken the drug dealing and prostitution problem into his own hands.

Another neighbor regularly confronts prostitutes, and one time last summer confronted young men hanging out in the neighborhood and ended up with his tires slashed, Ramey said.

Ramey said Collins is like many who believe the neighborhood, filled with large homes, many of them in excellent condition, is worth fighting for.

Ramey called police Monday, he said, because two prostitutes were standing on the sidewalk on the other side of the street in the afternoon just before the middle-school and high-school students were due to come walking by on their way home.

Ramey said he hopes what Collins did will call attention to the constant drug dealing and prostitution, in part because it’s making it harder and harder for him to rent the apartments he owns on the street.

runyan@vindy.com