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Nadi murder suspect arraigned on robbery charge
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Larry McDonald shook his head Friday as a municipal court judge imposed a $1 million bond on him.
The 19-year-old McDonald, of Truman Avenue, was being arraigned via video hookup from the Mahoning County jail, where he was taken Thursday after being released from St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital, where he was being treated for wounds police say he suffered during an attempted robbery Nov. 19 at a store on South Avenue during an exchange of gunfire with 29-year-old Abdullah Mahdi Nagi.
Nagi, the owner of the store, died in the gunbattle. Though a suspect in Nagi’s death, McDonald was arraigned Friday on a charge of aggravated robbery in a robbery of another store Nagi owned on Belmont Avenue.
McDonald was arraigned before Judge Elizabeth Kobly while wearing a hospital gown as Assistant City Prosecutor Shelli Freeze outlined her reasons for asking for a high bond. Freeze said McDonald faces a probation violation on a 2013 charge of carrying a concealed weapon, is a suspect in Nagi’s death and also is a flight risk.
In the Nov. 18 robbery, McDonald is accused of taking a gun from the store and using it by pointing it at a clerk and running out with clothes and the gun.
The next day, police say he want to Nagi’s 2608 South Ave. store and was looking at clothes, but some of the words he used worried store employees, because the robber the day before had been saying the same things.
Nagi took his gun and went over to McDonald under the guise of helping him, but the two ended up shooting at each other, police said. Nagi was shot in the head but was able to hit McDonald twice in the stomach before he went down.
Onlookers tackled McDonald and held him until police arrived.
Police said last week they do not believe the gun that was taken at the Belmont Avenue store was used to shoot Nagi, but they are running tests to make sure.