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Witness granted judicial release
By joe gorman
youngstown
A North Side man who was sentenced to four years in prison for a shooting in which a 7-year-old girl was wounded and who also was a witness in a gruesome double-murder trial was granted his freedom Friday.
Asa Bush, 27, was serving four years in prison after being sentenced in 2011 for the charges of felonious assault and a separate case of obstructing justice.
Prosecutors did not oppose Bush’s request for judicial release.
A hearing took place Friday before Judge James C. Evans in the Mahoning County Court of Common Pleas.
Bush filed the motion Sept. 27, 2012.
On the felonious-assault charge, he entered a guilty plea for the June 2010 shooting of the girl, who was hit in both legs when she was in a car belonging to a relative in the parking lot of a store on Logan Avenue.
Another defendant in that case, Alfonda Madison, received probation after pleading guilty, and a third defendant, Samson Snowden, 23, received three years after pleading guilty in 2011. He filed a request for judicial release in January, and Judge Evans denied his request in March.
Madison and Bush also were witnesses for the prosecution in the case against Lorenza Barnette, 31, who along with Joseph Moreland, 30, and Kenneth Moncrief, 29, faced charges in 2011 for the Aug. 11, 2009, murders of Darry B. Woods-Burt, 19, and Jaron Roland, 20. Both men were suffocated by having garbage bags placed over their head with duct tape, then after they pleaded for their lives and died, were put in a car that was set on fire on the banks of the Mahoning River.
Barnette was sentenced to life in prison without parole after his trial; Moreland and Moncrief each entered guilty pleas and were sentenced to 17 years in prison and 15 years to life in prison, respectively.