Police probe crime scenes

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Gunfire erupted on the city’s North Side early Wednesday evening, leaving two gunshot victims and police searching multiple crime scenes.

Passers-by took Mack Hill, 19, of Crandall Avenue to North Side Medical Center where he was treated for a gunshot wound to his knee.

Bryon Thomas, 25, of West Marion Avenue was taken to St. Elizabeth Health Center with gunshot wounds to his hand and legs.

Shortly after 5 p.m. the front-door glass to a Belmont Avenue Chinese restaurant was shattered with obvious multiple bullet holes. The entrance to the post office on Guadalupe Avenue was covered in blood, and police were combing Alameda and Belmont avenues in search of evidence.

Witnesses said two men started fighting or wrestling in the parking lot of the Chinese restaurant with one of the men holding a handgun.

The witness said the man holding the gun shot the other man and ran off toward Alameda Avenue.

Other witnesses in the area of Alameda said the man believed to be the initial shooter was then himself shot in the legs and ran through backyards toward the post office on Guadalupe at Crandall Avenue, stopping and banging on doors and asking for help along the way.

The second victim ultimately was found in front of the post office.

Police, shortly after the shooting, received a tip that someone had dropped a firearm in a postal box outside the post office. Officers and postal workers opened the box, but no weapon was removed from the box.

Police questioned the two victims at the hospitals, and reports document their accounts of what happened.

Witnesses who took Hill to North Side said they were walking in the area, heard several shots, then heard Hill yell, “I’m shot!” He asked them to go to his friend’s house on Francisca Avenue and get his car, which they used to drive him to the hospital.

Hill told police he’d walked from Francisca to a store on Belmont Avenue and was on his way back when a man approached him and pulled a gun. He said he grabbed it and they began wrestling. That’s when he was shot in the knee, he said. He said he didn’t know the shooter.

Thomas told police he was walking from a friend’s house on Alameda to a Belmont store when a man approached him and said to give him back his belongings. He said he didn’t know what the man was talking about. The man pulled a handgun and he tried to wrestle it from him, he told police. He said he got shot in the hand.

He said he ran through a nearby plaza to get away and encountered the same shooter. He said he was shot several more times near Alameda and Guadalupe. He said he ran to Guadalupe and Crandall, where he collapsed in front of the post office.