Man’s body found in field; 3rd city homicide in week

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Duane L. Colvin, 32, of East Florida Avenue was found dead in a field between houses on Ferndale Avenue on Saturday morning in the second South Side killing in two days and the third in one week.

If his death is ruled a homicide, it will be the 14th homicide of 2011. Quest Wagoner, 22, was found shot to death in his Inverness Avenue home on Thursday evening. There were 18 homicides by this date in 2010.

Youngstown police had made no arrests in Colvin’s death as of Saturday evening.

Colvin made news in 1996 as a 16-year-old when Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court sentenced him to between 371/2 years and 90 years in prison for a string of crimes including aggravated robberies and escape from the Martin P. Joyce Juvenile Justice Center.

Prison records were not available Saturday to indicate how long he spent in prison. Colvin was tried as an adult and ordered to serve his sentence in the adult prison system.

Police were called to a field between 463 and 471 Ferndale Avenue at 10:08 a.m. Saturday for a possible body and found Colvin in a multicolored hoodie. His body was on its side.

A man working at 463 Ferndale called police after spotting the body.

A neighbor on Ferndale reported hearing five gunshots between 11 p.m. and midnight Friday — two shots and then three.

Two bullet casings were found in the driveway at 464 W. Judson Ave., the next street north. A bullet hole was found in a fence and two in a tree near the Judson residence, police said.

Colvin lived on Whitman Lane on the East Side in January 1996 when he was convicted of robbery, escape and weapons charges. His charges stemmed from an armed holdup of Foy’s Bar-BQ on Market Street and a Mahoning Avenue pizza shop the previous October.