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Witness says homicide victim shot twice while on the ground
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Prosecutors played a video interview Wednesday of a witness who said the victim of a fatal shooting in 2012 on the North Side was shot two separate times as he was lying on the ground.
Jurors in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court heard Pat Stilson tell Detective Sgt. Darryl Martin that she saw the man who shot 57-year-old Mark Haskins in October 2012 at Kensington and Bissell avenues.
Stilson said on the video that several shots were fired at Haskins. After he was on the ground the shooter walked up to him, shot him again, then fired a third time when Haskins rolled on the ground.
“I heard three or four shots,” Stilson said on the videotape. “He shot him a couple of more times while he [Haskins] was on the ground.”
Janero Mitchell, 29, of Crandall Avenue, is charged in Haskins’ death. Testimony in his trial before Judge James C. Evans began Tuesday.
Jurors also watched a video of a few days later, when Stilson picked Mitchell out of a photo lineup shown to her by detectives.
Stilson, who was in court and watched her interview from the witness stand, told Martin on the video the person who shot Haskins said nothing before he began firing.
“I didn’t hear him [shooter] say anything,” Stilson said on the video. “I don’t even know if they knew each other.”
Stilson said she was afraid. Without elaborating, she told Martin on the video that she has had guns pulled on her before.
“It was scary,” Stilson said. “As many times as I’ve had a gun pulled on me, that would freak you out.”
Stilson said she was afraid for her safety and asked for more officers to patrol her street. Martin told her he would have the North Side patrol cars pay extra attention to her neighborhood.
Also testifying Wednesday were members of the police department’s crime lab, who collected evidence at the crime scene; a member of the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation, who analyzed ballistic evidence for police; and Mahoning County forensic pathologist Dr. Joseph Ohr, who testified about how Haskins died.