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Two more men charged in South Street homicide
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Two of three men charged in the April 7 killing of James R. Levels and wounding of Lisa Prater were arraigned on the charges Friday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.
Judge W. Wyatt McKay set bond of $1 million each for Beau A. Palmer, 30, of Clermont Avenue Northeast, and James Stein, 29, of Atlantic Street Northeast. Both entered not-guilty pleas.
Both are charged with complicity to murder, complicity to aggravated burglary, complicity to felonious assault and complicity to aggravated robbery. Palmer faces the additional charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
If convicted of the complicity-to-murder charge, each could get a life prison sentence with parole eligibility after 15 years. The other charges could add more than 30 additional years.
Palmer and Stein were indicted secretly Thursday.
The charges relate to the home-invasion robbery April 7 of a home in the 900 block of South Street near Logan Avenue that killed Levels, 64, of Beal Street Northwest, and injured Prater, 48, who lived at the residence.
Michael Settle, 26, of Sherman Avenue in Niles, was arraigned last week and is being held in the county jail in lieu of $1.5 million bond after being indicted on charges of aggravated murder, aggravated burglary, felonious assault, tampering with evidence and being a felon in possession of a firearm in connection with the shootings.
Nearly all of the charges for Settle, Palmer and Stein contain specifications that they used a firearm in commission of the crimes. Such specifications typically add additional time to a person’s prison sentence if convicted.
Settle is accused of being the triggerman in the April 7 incident. Prater, who was shot two times but survived, told police the incident began with two males entering the home to commit a robbery.
Police have not said how the situation evolved into homicide, and they did not publicly reveal earlier that they suspected more than two men were involved.
Merkel said Palmer and Stein were arrested Thursday by the U.S. Marshals Violent Fugitives Task Force.
U.S. marshals arrested Palmer at his home on Clermont on Thursday morning. They located Stein in Erie, Pa., and he agreed to meet them on U.S. Route 90 near the Ohio/Pennsylvania line Thursday afternoon.
Merkel praised Warren police Detectives Wayne Mackey and John Greaver for their work in the case and the work of the U.S. marshals in getting the suspects into custody.
Merkel said the arrest and conviction of the men should continue to convey the message that gun violence in Warren isn’t acceptable.
The police department has used several tools in recent months to get across this message, including the Ohio Attorney General’s Safe Neighborhoods Initiative, which kicked off at the county courthouse in March.
It included talks by Merkel, a federal prosecutor, a probation officer who is also a pastor, an ex-convict, an emergency-room physician and a social worker to drive home the point that gun-violence is a dead-end street.
Fourteen men identified as likely perpetrators of violent crime were required to attend the meeting as a condition of probation. Merkel has said that meeting and follow-up meetings have made a difference in the lives of some of the men.
In addition to his secret indictment in the South Street killing, Palmer also was indicted Thursday in a burglary from May.
He also was sentenced to five years in prison in common pleas court in 2009 after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter and other charges in the death of Clint Zimmerman, 28. Zimmerman was shot in the chest at his home on Logan Avenue Northeast in 2008.