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Warren kidnapping victim testifies she feared for her life
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A Charles Avenue Southeast woman testified Tuesday she feared she and her son would be killed if she got back into her car with an armed kidnapper Feb. 22 — so she chose to “end it.”
Reiko Williamson said during the trial for Taylor Ervin-Williams, 20, of Belmont Street Northwest, that she and her son had fallen asleep in the same room while watching television at their home that night, but she awoke to an armed and masked man standing in the room, demanding money.
She gave him $40 from her purse, but he demanded more.
He forced her and her son, Bryce Humphrey, 19, to get into their own car about 10 p.m. and ordered Williamson to drive to her ATM machine in the parking lot of the Hot Dog Shoppe on West Market Street, where she walked to the ATM and withdrew $300. The restaurant was just closing.
After handing the robber the cash and hearing him say, “Get in the car,” she took decisive action — telling him “No,” and backing away from the car.
“I decided at that moment, ‘This is going to end one way or another right here,’” she said, explaining, “They always say don’t go to that second location. It’s probably where you’re going to get it.
“So if he was going to get me and Bryce, he was going to get us there — out in the open where we could be found, where somebody might be able to get to us to help us.”
Williamson said she backed away, “hoping he would shoot out at me, and Bryce could get away, or [the kidnapper] might come out and chase me.” But the man didn’t shoot, so she looked at her son and motioned with her hands for him to get out of the car and run toward her.
“And I just turned around and started running toward the Hot Dog Shoppe,” she said. “As soon as I turned around, Bryce was right there, screaming ‘Go, go, keep going.”
A few moments later, they flagged down a motorist, who allowed them to use his cellphone to call 911.
A short time later, Warren police spotted Williamson’s car with a male inside and chased it, sometimes at high speeds, through the city until the driver bailed out and ran near Belmont Street.
Police apprehended Ervin-Williams nearby and charged him with the crime. Ervin-Williams, on trial in the courtroom of Judge Ronald Rice of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, could get more than 40 years in prison if convicted of kidnapping, aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery.
Williamson testified that after police captured Ervin-Williams, they showed her the dark jacket and red bandana they found near him, and she identified them as being the items the kidnapper was wearing.
The jacket had “a distinct, glittery marking on the back,” she said of the jacket that Chris Becker, assistant Trumbull County prosecutor held up for her to identify.
She also testified that the kidnapper had markings on his upper right cheek that were “consistent with” marks that could be seen in court on the face of Ervin-Williams.
The markings were visible just above the area the red bandanna was covering, she said.
Humphrey testified that police took him to Belmont Street after police captured Ervin-Williams there, and he was “very certain” that Ervin-Williams was the man who kidnapped him and his mother.
Under cross-examination by Ervin-Williams’ attorney, Gilbert W.R. Rucker III, Humphrey said he couldn’t identify Ervin-Williams just by looking at his face, but he was sure after hearing Ervin-Williams speak.
Becker showed video and audio from the police car of Patrolman David Weber, showing him chasing Williamson’s car to the Belmont Street area and getting out to chase the fleeing suspect on foot.
Weber said he eventually spotted a man in the front window of the first-floor apartment where Ervin-Williams was living on Belmont, then entering the apartment and finding Ervin-Williams in the neighbor’s upstairs apartment in bed with a female.
A pair of muddy boots was in the room; Weber said he believes Ervin-Williams was wearing the boots while running from police.
The trial resumes today.