Man arrested in first homicide of '14

May 10, 2014 at 12:00a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

A man secretly indicted Thursday by a Mahoning County grand jury on a charge of aggravated murder was taken into custody Friday.

Jail records show that Matthew Cochrane, 25, of Youngstown, was booked into the jail Friday on the aggravated-murder charge and also two counts of felonious assault.

He is expected to be arraigned before Common Pleas Court Judge John Durkin next week.

Cochrane is accused in the death of 20-year-old Dajhon Neely of Liberty, who died March 31 at St. Elizabeth Health Center after he was shot in a car about 12:20 a.m. March 29 on South Avenue near the junction with Interstate 680.

Police said there were two other people in the car with Neely at the time he was shot who are the basis for the felonious-assault charges.

Detective Sgt. Darryl Martin, lead investigator, said Neely and Cochrane were arguing through text messages about a female, and that led to the shooting.

Court records show that Cochrane served a seven-month prison sentence on breaking and entering, receiving stolen property, theft and attempted-theft charges in 2010 after being charged in 2009 in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.

In 2010, he faced charges in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court of failure to comply with the order or signal of a police officer and receiving stolen property. He received a nine-month sentence in that case, to run consecutively with the case in Trumbull County.

Neely’s death was the first homicide in Youngstown this year. Another man died a day later in a shooting on Idora Avenue. Those are the only two homicides the city has recorded so far in 2014.

At this point last year, Youngstown had four homicides, and there were a total of 20 in 2013.