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Man caught in house with guns arraigned
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A man found amid a cache of weapons in an East Side home Tuesday morning during a roundup of suspected gang members was arraigned in municipal court Wednesday.
Robert Blackshear, 55, was arraigned before Judge Elizabeth Kobly on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of heroin.
Blackshear was arrested about 7:45 a.m. Tuesday in a McGuffey Road home as members of the Mahoning Valley Violent Crimes Task Force were looking for a suspected member of the E Block Gang based on the West Side.
Additionally, just one of the 12 men indicted on gang and other charges last week who were rounded up Tuesday still remains at large. Police still are looking for Tawuan Gordon, no age available.
Blackshear was inside the home when police went to look for another member who was thought to be there, reports said. Reports said officers knocked on the door for 20 minutes before kicking it in after receiving no answer.
Blackshear was inside and told police he did not live there but sometimes a woman he knows lets him stay there. In plain view, officers found a 12-gauge shotgun and two 9 mm handguns, reports said.
Those officers obtained a warrant and searched the rest of the house and found several other weapons, including an SKS assault rifle and a 37 mm grenade launcher. Some grenades for the launcher were found in a plastic bag on the floor. The Youngstown Police Department Bomb Squad was called in to take possession of the grenades.
Also found was a kit for the grenade launcher to convert it to shoot shotgun rounds, reports said. Officers also found a bag of heroin inside the house.
His bond was set at $17,500 during his arraignment.
Court records show that Blackshear was charged with murder in the 1999 beating death of a woman on the East Side with another man and was found not guilty.
A co-defendant in the case, Christopher Love, was found guilty of aggravated murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2002 with parole eligibility after 20 years.
Blackshear has an aggravated-assault conviction with a firearm specification from 2011 and weapons convictions from as far back as 1989.
The men who police say are members of the gang were secretly indicted by a Mahoning County grand jury last Thursday on a variety of charges, including trafficking in counterfeit drugs, trafficking in cocaine, aggravated riot, aggravated robbery, felonious assault and participating in a criminal gang.
Prosecutors say that since 2009, the gang has been operating on the lower West Side based in the Evanston Avenue area.