Niles man charged with murder in April homicide in Warren

Staff report

WARREN

Michael Settle, 26, of Sherman Avenue in Niles will be arraigned today in Warren Municipal Court on a murder charge, accused of killing James R. Levels, 64, of Beal Street Northwest.

Police arrested Settle at the Sherman Avenue address Monday and booked him into the Trumbull County jail. Police say additional charges may be forthcoming.

Lisa Prater, 48, told police two males broke into her house in the 900 block of South Street Southeast at 11:25 p.m. April 7 and were attempting to rob her when the suspects shot her and Levels.

Levels was found unresponsive in the bedroom of the home and later was pronounced dead. It was Warren’s first homicide of 2014. Prater was treated for two gunshot wounds.

The same house also was the scene of a suspicious fire June 26. The home was vacant at the time the fire, which was deemed a total loss of $22,000.

Warren Municipal Court also issued an arrest warrant Monday for Denzil Chaney, 23, of Fifth Street Southwest and Bock Street Southeast, charging him with aggravated burglary in connection with a Thursday incident.

As of Monday, he was still at large. If convicted, he could get 10 years in prison.

He’s accused of holding a gun to a 23-year-old woman’s head in the driveway of her home on George Place Southwest.

A woman said that when she returned to her home, she saw a suspicious vehicle near the driveway and then saw a man come out of her apartment and run back in.

As she approached her door, the man came out of the home, tackled her, put her in a headlock, then pointed a handgun to her head.

Her boyfriend came to help her, and the suspect fled in the suspicious vehicle.

Chaney pleaded not guilty in Warren Municipal Court in May to felonious assault and other charges after a 24-year-old Niles woman reported that Chaney broke a bottle on her head during an argument on Tod Avenue Southwest on May 5.

He also slammed her head into concrete pillar, the woman said.