43
Woman pleads innocent to double slaying
Photo
Karenda Hutsenpiller
Photo
Rahman Warfield
Photo
Steven S. Falson
By ED RUNYAN
WARREN
A 21-year-old city woman has pleaded innocent to killing two men at 1123 McKinley St. N.E. over the weekend.
Karenda Hutsenpiller of Fifth Street Southwest entered the plea Monday in Warren Municipal Court after spending Saturday and Sunday in Trumbull County Jail. Police arrested her at 5:40 a.m. Saturday at her home on a warrant.
Rahman Warfield, 34, of 1123 McKinley and Steven S. Faison, 24, of Duke Avenue Southeast were found shot to death at Warfield’s two-story home shortly after midnight Saturday.
Hutsenpiller was arrested after police learned that she “had knowledge of the homicide,” Sgt. Jeff Cole of the Warren Police Department said.
Hutsenpiller’s warrant was for failing to pay fines and costs on a 2008 traffic case in which she was driving without a license.
Hutsenpiller also is under indictment in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court on a charge of illegal possession of a firearm in a liquor establishment in August 2009.
Cole would not say what led police to charge Hutsenpiller with the homicides. He also would not say whether police have a theory of why the men were killed.
When Hutsenpiller appeared Monday in Warren Municipal Court on two counts of murder, she was ordered held in Trumbull County Jail without bond. She returns to court at 1:30 p.m. next Tuesday.
A neighbor of Warfield’s said one of the dead men was on the porch and the other was inside the house. Another neighbor said two gunshots were audible from their house up the street.
A Warren police report said the shootings were reported about 19 minutes after midnight and that a suspicious vehicle was a blue or green Dodge Caravan with a burned-out rear hazard light.
The neighborhood is a couple of blocks immediately south of Harding High School.
In 2007, Hutsenpiller pleaded guilty in Warren Municipal Court to domestic violence and was placed on three years’ probation and sentenced to two days in jail.
Since 1996, Warfield was convicted in Warren-area courts for resisting arrest, attempted drug abuse, four times for criminal trespassing and twice for drug possession. In 2005 and 2006, he was convicted of playing loud music.
Since 2003, Faison was convicted in Warren-area courts of receiving stolen property, drug abuse twice, petty theft, obstructing official business and disorderly conduct. He was sentenced to a year in prison in 2003 for a probation violation stemming from a conviction for carrying a concealed weapon.