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Cops deal with DUI, disorderly and cable theft
By joe gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Police dealt with everything from a double shooting to cable theft over the weekend, with a steady diet of alcohol and traffic offenses in between.
Detectives identified two men who were dropped off at St. Elizabeth Health Center with gunshot wounds about 3 p.m. Sunday as Rahim Johnson, 17, and Samer Awadalla, 20. Police said they were shot on Council Rock Avenue near Lincoln Park by someone in another car. Officers found the car they were shot in Monday morning at a home on Superior Avenue.
While the pair were being treated Sunday, Rilonda Neal, 26, of Miller Street, was arrested at the hospital by Humility of Mary Health Partners Police after reports said she punched another woman in the face who Neal accused of lying to city police when she was questioned, as family and friends of the two were at the hospital. She was given a bond of $2,500 at her arraignment in Municipal Court on Monday. Johnson and Awadalla are still being treated for their injuries.
About 2:20 p.m. Sunday, Dennis Dyer, 58, was arrested for driving drunk with a blood-alcohol content almost three times the legal limit on the West Side.
An officer on patrol on McCollom Road noticed a car driven by Dyer that drove into a yard and back on to the road, reports state. When the officer went to pull him over, the car drove over a curb one more time before coming back on the road, reports said.
Dyer twice dropped his wallet when he got out of the car and told the officer he would have to pick it up, reports said. He said he had been drinking about 45 minutes before he was pulled over. Reports said Dyer failed a field sobriety test because he could not stand. He was taken to the police station for a Breathalyzer test, where he registered a blood-alcohol content of 0.238. The legal limit in Ohio is 0.08. He was arraigned in Municipal Court on Monday and has a pretrial hearing Nov. 1.
About 9 a.m. Sunday, police investigated an accident in the northbound lanes of Interstate 680. Police were called to the exit at Shirley Road, where a man told them he was driving north when he was hit from behind by another car, which pushed his car into a guardrail, spun it around until it crashed into a concrete median and then stopped. The other car kept driving, reports said.
Reports said an “imprint” of the other car’s license plate was left on the victim’s car and they were able to get a plate number from that and from there track the car to a Hazelwood Avenue address. Reports said when officers went to the home and they knocked on the door, no one answered. The car was in the driveway with damage to its front end and paint that matched the victim’s car was on it also.
The driver, Melanie King, 27, came outside only when the car was about to be towed and she told police at first a friend had the car and was coming home from a 12-hour shift at a Boardman restaurant.
However after police called the restaurant to check her story and told her they would not arrest her but only cite her, she told them she was driving after a long shift and must have fallen asleep.
Reports said King told officers she was awakened by a bump and saw the other car hit the guardrail. She panicked and kept driving home, reports said. She was arraigned in municipal court Monday and has a preliminary hearing Nov. 1.
Earlier Sunday morning, reports said an officer spotted Samantha Zalovick, 24, of Youngstown stumbling at North Hazel and Commerce streets about 3 a.m. and that she was yelling obscenities at people passing by.
She got into a friend’s car and when an officer told her to get out because he wanted to cite her for disorderly conduct, she refused, reports said. Instead, she had to be taken out of the car and to the ground and handcuffed, reports said.
She was taken to the Mahoning County jail on charges of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, reports said. There was no record of her arraignment.
On Saturday, police arrested a man at a West Side home about 6:30 p.m. on charges of stealing the cable television signal from a neighbor who has been in the hospital.
Officers were called to the first block of Manchester Avenue by a man who was checking on the home of his father, who is in the hospital, when he spotted a cable television wire running from his father’s home to the home of neighbor.
An officer cut the wire and the man who called them said there was a 40-inch television missing from his father’s home as well as a computer and monitor.
Reports did not say where the television and other electronic items might be, but the neighbor was arrested on the charge of unauthorized use of property and taken to the county jail, reports said. However, a check of the municipal court website showed charges were not filed as of Monday and there was no listing for the neighbor in jail records over the weekend.