Couple in shooting charged


By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Police have charged both the man and woman involved in the Wednesday morning shooting at a Vienna Township home with drug trafficking, and charged the woman with two counts of felonious assault.

Brooke Hoffman, 38, and Craig Hoffman, 33, are in St. Elizabeth Health Center with what appear to be nonlife-threatening gunshot wounds, Vienna Police Chief Andy Pecchio said. Each will be arraigned in Girard Municipal Court upon their release from the hospital.

Pecchio said police believe that Brooke Hoffman hit Craig Hoffman with one gunshot to the thigh and one to the shoulder with a Tech 9 firearm, which looks like a small machine gun.

He said Brooke Hoffman arrived at the house angry over a text message that proposed three-way sex among Brooke Hoffman, Craig Hoffman and a second woman.

She drove a 1991 Camaro around the back of the five-plex house at 4499 Warren-Sharon Road, firing once at the house, then crashing the Camaro into a motorcycle, flatting a tire on the Camaro; then entered the house.

She fired the gun at Craig Hoffman, hitting him, and then they struggled with the gun, causing it to go off and graze Brooke Hoffman in the back of the head, Pecchio said.

In searching the house afterward, police found numerous firearms, crack cocaine, powdered cocaine, drug paraphernalia, digital scales and items used in the manufacture of drugs, police said.

Officer Brian Darby of the Vienna Police Department was the first officer to arrive, speaking to a resident in one of the other apartments in the home, according to a search warrant filed with the Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.

Craig Hoffman was exiting the house with a shot-gun in his hand. Darby ordered him to the ground, and Craig Hoffman told Darby his wife had shot him. Craig Hoffman had blood on his shoulder.

Darby and a Brookfield police officer entered the home a short time later and found Brooke Hoffman on the bed unresponsive.

A 16-year-old neighbor told police he saw Brooke Hoffman driving the Camaro into the driveway and yelling. Gunshots rang out before and after she went inside the house, the witness said.

Brooke Hoffman is charged with the drug trafficking and felonious assault, while Craig Hoffman is charged with drug trafficking. The trafficking charges carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison, while the felonious assault carries a penalty of up to eight years upon conviction.