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Investigation to determine whether remains belong to missing Warren teen
By Ed Runyan
roaming shores
James E. Brooks, 40, who has served at least two prison terms for crimes he committed in Trumbull County since 2009, is the man who lived in the Ashtabula County house where human remains were found Thursday.
Authorities are making plans to conduct DNA tests to determine whether the remains are those of Alesha Bell, 18, of Warren, who has been missing since July 23.
Brooks was arraigned Friday in Ashtabula County’s Western District Court in Geneva on drug and weapons charges and abuse of a corpse, apparently related to the remains found in a burn pit and along a tree line behind the house on U.S. Route 6 in Roaming Shores.
The home, just west of state Route 45, is near Jefferson and 37 miles north of Warren.
Brooks was among a number of people arrested Thursday and Friday in a multijurisdictional drug investigation. But investigators also were on alert at Brooks’ house because of Bell, officials said.
Lt. Dan Mason of the Warren Police Department confirmed that Warren Police Detective Nick Carney went to Roaming Shores to participate in the investigation of the remains because of the possibility that they are those of Bell.
An investigator with the Ashtabula County Coroner’s Office said the remains appear to be those of a person of small stature but not a child.
Bell is described as 5 feet 1 inch tall and 115 pounds, Warren police said when they issued a bulletin in July about her disappearance.
Bell, of Southwest Boulevard Southwest, was reported missing by her mother.
Another Warren teen, La’Sha Johnson, 18, of Deerfield Avenue Southwest, has been missing since her grandmother reported it July 17.
Officials seem focused on the remains being those of Bell, making arrangements to collect DNA from Bell’s mother to submit to the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office along with the recovered remains, to determine whether the remains are those of Bell.
Tom Despenes, an investigator with the Ashtabula County Coroner’s Office, said the remains found along the wood line are the ones that will be used for DNA purposes. The remains found in a fire pit were burned, he said. The fire pit is near the house and garage. It will probably take two weeks or more to get results of the DNA tests, he said.
Ashtabula County Coroner Pamela L. Lancaster examined the remains Thursday morning at the scene, and photographs were sent to the anthropology department at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pa. Both agreed the remains were human, Despenes said.
Mason said Ashtabula County authorities contacted Warren police after the remains were found because they were aware that Warren had active missing-persons cases.
The Ashtabula Star Beacon reported Warren police were investigating Brooks before Thursday, but not for drugs.
And television station Fox 8 reported Friday that police had searched Brooks’ Roaming Shores home before Thursday looking for Bell.
Brooks, of 1773 U.S. Route 6, was arraigned Friday on four counts of drug trafficking, four counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm and single counts of abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence.
He was sentenced to three years in prison in 2009 in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court for felonious assault and two years in prison in 2010 for escape.
He had a Ferndale Avenue Southwest address in Warren in 2010.