Youngstown police find guns after two traffic stops

Youngstown police find guns after two traffic stops

YOUNGSTOWN

Police seized two guns over the weekend in separate traffic stops on the South Side.

About 1:15 a.m. Sunday Patrolman Jerry Fulmer pulled over a car at West Myrtle Avenue and Market Street that had a license plate that had been expired since 2006, reports said, and when he went to talk to the driver there was a strong smell of marijuana inside.

Reports said Fulmer asked the woman driver and a passenger, John Davis III, 24, of Warren, to get out so he could check the car as K9 Officer Jessica Shields arrived to assist,.

Davis walked over to a sidewalk and then took off running, reports said. Fulmer and Shields both chased him on West Myrtle and he fell down in a wooded area of West Myrtle Avenue and Lois Court, where the officers were able to catch him and cuff him, reports said.

Another officer who was searching the car found a loaded 9mm handgun underneath the seat Davis was sitting in. He was taken to the Mahoning County jail for the charges of resisting arrest, obstructing official business, improperly handling a firearm in a motor vehicle and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Reports said court records showed Davis has a 2007 conviction for aggravated robbery. Trumbull County Common Pleas Court records show he was sentenced to probation in May of 2011 to a count of carrying a concealed weapon and a year later he was given a 17-month prison term by Judge W. Wyatt McKay for a probation violation on that charge.

About 8:20 p.m. Saturday, officers pulled over a car in the 400 block of West Warren Avenue because it had a broken taillight, reports said. When officers went to talk to the people in that car, they also smelled a strong odor of marijuana, reports said, and one of the back seat passengers, later identified as 25-year-old Lamar Stanley of Youngstown, was fidgeting in the back, reports said.

Officers took the four people inside the car out to search it and when they patted down Stanley they found a .loaded .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun in his jacket pocket, reports said.

Stanley was taken to the jail on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon. The driver was cited for driving with a broken taillight and he and his passengers were released.