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Police looking for suspects in weekend homicides
By joe gorman
youngstown
Detectives are looking for suspects after a pair of unrelated homicides over the weekend.
Police Chief Rod Foley said one of the victims, James Brown, 33, who was found about 3:40 a.m. Saturday on South Truesdale Avenue dead from a gunshot wound, had an extensive criminal background, and investigators are trying to trace his whereabouts before he was shot to death.
Foley said detectives think Brown was thrown out of a car onto the road. He was found by a West Middlesex, Pa., woman who in turn notified police.
Foley said police have a person of interest in the stabbing death of Ivan DeMorris West, 28, of Liberty, who was found inside an apartment at 107 Hilton Ave. on the South Side about 1:15 a.m. Sunday.
Reports said West stopped breathing just before ambulance workers arrived.
A 57-year-old man was present when police were called, and he appeared agitated that officers were there and was nervous about what might happen to West, reports said. He was taken to the police station, interviewed by detectives and released.
The man told police West banged on the door and said he had been stabbed and when he let West inside he collapsed, reports said.
The two deaths bring the total number of homicides in the city to 12 for 2013. The last homicide was July 29, when William McClain, 39, of Lilburne Drive, died of wounds he suffered about 11 p.m. July 27 during a rolling gunbattle on the East Side.
At this time in 2012, Youngstown had 21 homicides and 26 total for the year.