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Two women enter guilty pleas in Winona Avenue homicide case
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
After guilty pleas Monday from two women involving their connection to the death of Shawn Cortez, 17, on the South Side last August, there remain 11 people whose cases still are open in the homicide.
Carlisha Hammonds, 19, and Rouxje Ezell, 20, each pleaded guilty in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to a charge of aggravated riot.
Assistant Prosecutor Martin Desmond told Judge Lou D’Apolito that in exchange for their pleas, prosecutors agreed to drop charges of involuntary manslaughter against both women.
Prosecutors are recommending probation as a sentence. Sentencing dates for the women have not been set.
Cortez was killed during a brawl between two families Aug. 17 on Winona Avenue. Prosecutors said a group of people went to a home on the street looking to fight and were chased away by the people in the home. Cortez was one of the pursuers. He was shot and later died at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital from his injuries.
Police used cellphone video taken of the fight to help build their case.
One other defendant pleaded guilty March 30 and 11 more still are awaiting trial. Two of those people, Dejon Jenkins, 19, and his brother David, 18, both face murder charges in Cortez’s death. The others were all charged with involuntary manslaughter and aggravated riot.
Desmond said Hammonds and Ezell were in a car on Glenwood Avenue heading to a home of someone they know on Winona Avenue when they saw a group of people on the corner heading toward the home Cortez was in.
Desmond said the brawl would have taken place even if the two were not there.
“They didn’t go there to be a part of this,” Desmond said. “They kind of stumbled into it.”
What the women did do was capture the brawl on their cellphones, and they can also be heard yelling encouragement to those who were actively participating as well as provoking them, Desmond said.
Desmond said the two women tried to give first aid to Cortez after he was shot before several men put Cortez in a car and started to drive him to the hospital themselves.
The remainder of the defendants are expected to go on trial later this spring.