Man gets 8-year sentence in shooting
Ronald J. Pugh Jr.
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Surveillance cameras were rolling when Ronald J. Pugh Jr., 26, of Youngstown and DeAngelo McCoy, 24, of Warren, got out of their cars in the parking lot of the Hampshire House apartments May 15 with a beef.
“They squared up to each other in a posture that there could be a confrontation,” then Pugh fired a shot into McCoy’s chest, killing him, said Gabe Wildman, an assistant Trumbull County prosecutor.
McCoy was not armed, Wildman said.
On Wednesday, Pugh pleaded guilty to a charge reduced from murder to involuntary manslaughter and received an eight-year prison sentence.
That didn’t sit well with McCoy’s mother, Crystal Collins of Toledo, who felt eight years wasn’t enough for leaving McCoy’s son without a father.
“He will never get the chance to know his father,” Collins said. “I’ll have to raise my grandson on my own.”
McCoy’s father, Jason Paige of Warren, stood before Judge W. Wyatt McKay of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, but he looked right into the eyes of Pugh as he lectured Pugh on violence.
“All you guys are so quick to grab a gun. What’s it solve? It’s so stupid.”
Pugh spoke back momentarily, saying, “I feared for my life that night.”
Prosecutors say they agreed to the lesser charge because McCoy posed a threat to Pugh also.
Pugh, of East Philadelphia Avenue, can get out of prison in a little less than eight years if he participates in various programs offered in prison.
McCoy’s killing was the second of two homicides in 2011 at the apartment complex, which is on Fifth Street Southwest.
No arrest has been made in the killing of Charmaine Delaney, 20, who was found shot to death in her apartment Jan. 31.
Police say McCoy, who lived on Third Street Southwest, had spent time in prison. Pugh was also in prison before.