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Aggravated robbery charge bound over
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A married West Middlesex, Pa., couple robbed at gunpoint in the parking lot of a West Rayen Avenue restaurant told the judge how a man quietly shuffled up to them, pulled a gun and demanded money.
Testifying in a preliminary hearing Tuesday before municipal court Judge Robert Milich, the husband said he refused to give anything to the man accused of robbing him, Kenneth Favors, 61, of West Delason Avenue, in the parking lot of Charlie Staples Barbecue about 9 p.m. Aug. 7.
“I told him no,” he testified. “He pointed the gun toward her [his wife]. I put my wife behind me. He said, ‘I’m not playing games.’”
The husband testified that Favors pulled the trigger but nothing happened. He said Favors then racked the slide of the gun to chamber another bullet but then ran away.
Favors was arrested Aug. 10 at a home in the 600 block of Foster Avenue. He has a criminal record dating to 1973.
Judge Milich bound the case over to a Mahoning County grand jury.
The wife said she was very scared. She said the whole event probably lasted seconds but to her it seemed “like it was forever.”
“The next thing I knew, he was in front of us with a gun pointed at us,” the wife testified. “I took off running and screaming.”
She also became emotional in court while testifying and paused for a moment.
“I never expected anything like this,” she said.
Charlie Staples, the owner of the restaurant, testified that when he found out about the robbery, he replayed the video from his security cameras. He said the video showed Favors enter the restaurant from West Rayen Avenue. He said the video shows Favors walk out of the restaurant behind the couple after they were done eating dinner. He said he saw a confrontation on the video where it appeared Favors was gesturing with a handgun before he ran away.
The husband said there was no way he would ever have given Favors anything.
“That’s just the way I am,” he said. “I’m not giving it up.”