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Two murder trials get under way
YOUNGSTOWN
Trials for two men charged in separate murders are under way in the Mahoning County Common Pleas Court with jury selection Tuesday and opening statements expected this week.
A conviction for Lorenza Barnette, 29, of Lora Avenue, could mean the death penalty. More than 200 jurors were excused from the potential panel last week, but jury selection continued Tuesday.
Judge Maureen Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, who will be presiding over the trial, also ordered Lake Erie Correctional Institution to make Asa Bush available to testify in the case. Bush is serving a four-year sentence for a 2009 North Side drive by shooting in which a 7-year-old girl was shot in the legs.
Barnette is one of three men charged in the murders of Jaron L. Roland, 20, of Fairmont Avenue and Darry B. Woods-Burt Jr., 19, of the city’s North Side in 2009.
Prosecutors contend that the two victims were bound, gagged, beaten and smothered at a home in the 400 block of Fairgreen Avenue before they were found dead Aug. 11, 2009, in a burning rental car along the Mahoning River near West Avenue.
The suffocation victims were found with their heads encased in dark plastic garbage bags and duct tape, with their wrists and ankles bound with duct tape, after a fisherman spotted the burning car.
Both victims’ cellphones were taken by the suspects, who used an accelerant to set the car ablaze, prosecutors said.
Joseph Moreland, 28, of Mahoning County jail and Kenneth Moncrief, 26, of the Fairgreen Avenue address also are charged in the murders.
Thomas Wright, 23, of Halleck Avenue, will also stand trial in the courtroom of Judge C. Evans of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court for the murder of Rodney Weaver, the city’s third homicide victim of 2010.
If convicted, Wright could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Weaver, 25, of Catalina Avenue, was pronounced dead at St. Elizabeth Health Center just before 10 p.m. Jan. 12, 2010. Weaver was found lying on the ground in front of a Lexington Avenue home on the North Side covered in blood from a gunshot wound.
According to police, Weaver likely was shot at another location before running to the Lexington Avenue area and collapsing. Officers followed footprints and spots of blood in the snow to an area in the 300 block of Broadway, where police believe the shooting took place.
Officers found several large shell casings in the 300 block of Broadway.
Officers spoke with a man who was with Weaver at the time of the shooting. The man told police he and Weaver went to a house in the 300 block of Broadway, and Weaver knocked on the door.
A short time later, a car pulled up to the house, and a man got out of the car and went to the front door.
The witness told police Weaver came back to the car, and an unidentified man walked up — either from the house or the second car — and demanded all of Weaver’s money. The shooting took place shortly thereafter.