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Accused Repchic killer was drive-by suspect
Photo
Aubrey Toney
Toney IDENTIFIed in shooting just days earlier, YPD report shows
YOUNGSTOWN
Aubrey Toney is awaiting trial for the murder of an elderly South Side man, but police records show he was the suspect in another South Side shooting days before the murder and was not arrested.
Toney, 29, of Youngstown, has been indicted on charges of aggravated murder and attempted murder and two counts of felonious assault in the murder of Thomas Repchic, 74, and wounding of Repchic’s wife, Jacqueline, 74. He faces the death penalty if convicted of those charges.
Toney appears today before Judge Maureen Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court for a pretrial hearing on the charges in the Repchic slaying.
The Cadillac driven by the Repchics was hit by gunfire in a drive-by shooting Sept. 25, 2010.
A police report at the Youngstown Police Department lists Toney as a suspect in a Sept. 12 drive-by shooting on Ferndale Avenue.
Maggy Lorenzi, a community activist, received an anonymous letter concerning the earlier shooting allegedly involving Toney.
“Tom could be alive if they [police] had acted quickly on these shootings,” Lorenzi said. “Lives were lost because the ball was dropped.”
According to the Sept. 12 police report, a 31-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman told police they were walking to a home in the 300 block of Ferndale when they noticed an Audi with Toney behind the wheel begin to slowly drive in their direction. The couple told police that Toney started firing shots at them as they ran toward the house.
The woman reportedly told police her husband, who had an ongoing feud with Toney and is believed to have been the target of the shooting, left after the shooting. But Toney, she said, returned to the house a short time later and opened fired on the home.
The woman told police her cousin, who had come to the house armed with a gun after the initial shooting, returned fire on the Audi.
A call to the woman whose home was hit by gunfire was not returned.
Several children live at the Ferndale address, but no one was injured. Reports list damage to a second-floor front bedroom from gunfire and damage to a nearby house.
Police also found a silver Audi wrecked on Hillman Street containing five spent shell casings. The 50-year-old owner of the Audi, listed as the boyfriend of Toney’s mother, told police he was driving the vehicle and someone opened fire on him. He said Toney was not in the vehicle.
The police department’s Capt. Rod Foley said detectives are aware of the Sept. 12 shooting and used details from it to help solve the Repchic murder.
He said arresting Toney or anyone immediately after the Ferndale shooting proved difficult because none of the people involved would cooperate with police.
Foley said the Ferndale shooting, and the accidental killing of Repchic two weeks later, stem from a feud between two factions. The feud, he said, started more than a year ago over one group of people accusing another group of providing information to police.
“We made contact with phone calls and left business cards with several people, but no one called back,” Foley said. “A lot of these people do not cooperate ... they are all just fighting with each other and among themselves out there.”
Felicia Braxton, 64, who owns a home that was damaged in the shooting, said she and her grandson witnessed the shooting and were willing to come forward and speak with detectives. Braxton said she is upset because the shooting could have taken the life of her 29-year-old grandson, and no one came to speak with them about filing charges.
“Somebody is lying,” Braxton said of claims that no one would testify. “I was more than willing to go forward, but no one contacted me since that time. My husband passed away a year ago, but I am still here and I am not running anywhere.”
In police reports, Braxton’s grandson told police he was walking the family dog when he heard the gunshots and saw a black male driver hanging out the window and shooting. He also gave police a description of the driver, who ran from the Audi after crashing it into a pole on Hillman Street.