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Inmate points to defendant as shooter in double killing
By JORDAN COHEN
WARREN
A Trumbull County jail inmate testified that he saw Eugene Henderson fire the high-powered assault rifle that killed two people, one of them an 11-year-old boy, in April 2009.
Marcus Yager, 23, who already has pleaded guilty for his role in the killings, said he watched Henderson, 25, take an AK-47 assault rifle and fire it 24 times into a house on Wick Street Southeast.
A resident of the home, Marvin Chaney, 26, was killed; one child, Lloyd McCoy Jr., was mortally wounded, and another child suffered a slight wound.
Yager said he was in the back seat of a car that Henderson was driving when Henderson stopped and began shooting from the street.
The trial is before Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge John Stuard. Henderson faces four counts of aggravated murder.
Yager, of Warren, said Henderson and Eugene Cumberbatch, also of Warren, wanted revenge because they believed Chaney had stolen $3,000 and drugs from Henderson during a card game.
Cumberbatch recently was convicted and sentenced to 38 years to life for his role in the slayings.
“YG [Henderson’s nickname] got out of the car and started shooting,” Yager said. He acknowledged providing a 9mm handgun used by Cumberbatch but said Henderson took the assault rifle from the basement of a Pearl Street home where he occasionally stayed.
Yager testified in a prison uniform. He has pleaded guilty to reduced charges of complicity to involuntary manslaughter and obstructing justice and could face a one- to five-year prison term. He said he agreed to the reduced charges in exchange for testifying against Henderson and Cumberbatch.
During opening statements, Chris Becker, assistant Trumbull County prosecutor, told the jury of eight women and four men that Henderson had told Cumberbatch to hold his cell phone and sunglasses when he stopped the car to fire the rifle. Cumberbatch, however, dropped the phone and glasses on the street when he got out of the car and fired the handgun, which jammed after one shot, Becker said.
Yager testified that afterward, Henderson was shouting at Cumberbatch for having dropped the phone and glasses, a conversation that was heard by another witness. “YG was pretty angry,” Yager said.
Police recovered both items, and Becker said DNA tests link them to Henderson.
“DNA can exclude [millions] on the planet, but you can’t exclude Henderson from these results,” Becker said.
The assault rifle has not been recovered.
“It is the defense’s position that [Henderson] had nothing to do with this,” said John Fowler, Henderson’s court-appointed attorney, in a brief opening statement.
The prosecution played a recording of the 911 call after the shootings in which loud screams could be heard throughout. Several members of the McCoy family, sitting among the spectators, wept while the recording played.
The case will continue with more prosecution evidence today.