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Child killer gets life sentence, no parole
By ED RUNYAN
WARREN
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Eugene Henderson
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FOUND GUILTY: Eugene Cumberbatch is led to the Trumbull County Courthouse before a jury found him guilty of two counts of complicity to aggravated murder and other charges related to the shooting deaths of Lloyd McCoy Jr., 11, and Marvin Chaney, 26, in Warren last spring.
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Lloyd McCoy Jr.
Eugene Henderson, the man who fired 27 shots into a house on Wick Street Southeast April 13, 2009, killing 11-year-old Lloyd McCoy Jr., and Marvin Chaney, 26, received a life prison term without parole Thursday.
Judge John M. Stuard of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court handed down the maximum sentence possible on the two counts of aggravated murder and other charges Henderson was convicted of during a trial in May.
Henderson, 26, and two other men went to the house to kill Chaney, who they believed had stolen $3,000 from them, co-defendant Marcus Yager testified.
Yager, 23, of Warren, also testified that he, Henderson and co-defendant Eugene Cumberbatch, 27, didn’t think there would be any children in the house the night of the shooting.
But Lloyd McCoy Sr., the dead boy’s father, wanted Judge Stuard to see that practically the entire McCoy family was in the house.
He asked two of his three adult daughters and his grandchildren to stand with him as he mentioned the fear they all felt as they huddled together after bullets from an assault rifle and handgun rang out.
Lloyd Jr., his only son, a sixth-grader at the Willard K-8 school, didn’t survive the gunshot wound that pierced his lung. His 3-year-old grandson survived a gunshot wound to the arm. His daughters and 6-year-old granddaughter were not hit.
Shortly after Judge Stuard announced his verdict, members of the McCoy and Henderson families began to yell at each other, but the six Trumbull County deputies in the courtroom and other court personnel separated the parties before it became physical.
McCoy said he’s glad Henderson got life in prison and not the death penalty because life in prison is worse.
“I want him to live pent up in a cage,” he said.
He called Henderson cowardly for shooting up a house when he could have killed Chaney in another place.
“Marvin made himself available around town,” McCoy said of Chaney, explaining that his daughter’s boyfriend was not hiding himself from public view.
“It was cowardly at the very least to shoot up a house that the blinds were open,” McCoy said. Lloyd McCoy Jr. was sitting on a couch in the front of the house when the shots were fired, his niece and nephew on either side of him. One of Lloyd Jr.’s sisters was standing at the front door, and another sister was standing in the kitchen area with Chaney.
Cumberbatch of Warren, who fired a handgun into the house only one time before it jammed, received a life prison sentence with parole eligibility after 38 years after a trial last year.
Yager, of Warren, who testified against Cumberbatch and Henderson at their trials, was released from Trumbull County Jail in June after being locked up for a little more than a year.
Chris Becker, the assistant county prosecutor who handled the cases against Henderson, Cumberbatch and Yager, said Judge Stuard gave Henderson a good sentence, calling it “well deserved.”
He also credited the Warren Police Department for preserving and gathering evidence found in the street in front of the home on Wick Street.
Quick thinking by Sgt. John Yuricek led to plastic food bowls’ being placed over a pair of sunglasses and a cell phone that were left behind by the assailants, thereby preserving DNA evidence, Becker said. The bowls were needed because it started to rain shortly after the shootings, Becker said.