Trial in shooting ends with hung jury

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A hung jury resulted in a mistrial for Earl Charity III on charges of firing at or into a house and two counts of felonious assault in an East Side drive-by shooting.

Judge James C. Evans of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court declared a mistrial Thursday afternoon after the jury was unable to reach a verdict concerning Charity, 25, of Delaware Avenue, after a four-day trial.

Charity was charged with shooting from a moving car at two men who were outside the residence of one of the victims in the 1100 block of Springdale Avenue on March 22, 2010.

Neither man was hit by the gunfire, but bullets struck the house and an SUV owned by one of the victims.

Rebecca Doherty, chief of the criminal division in the county prosecutor’s office, said her office will retry the case “because we feel that we have the evidence to convict him.”

Charity, who now is in prison for a burglary, faces a jury trial at a later date in the Oct. 4, 2009, murder of Darrick M. Hall, 23, of East Marion Avenue.

Hall was shot multiple times at North Avenue and Arlington Street, and police found him dead in the grass.