STATE DIGEST: 3 killed in Columbus shootings; pedestrian killed on interstate

3 die in Columbus Christmas shootings

COLUMBUS

Columbus police say three people have been killed in two separate shootings on Christmas morning.

None of the victims has been identified and there were no reports Friday of any suspects being arrested. The body of a man was found on the city’s south side around 2 a.m. after residents reported hearing gunfire.

The bodies of a man and a woman were discovered about 4 a.m. in the parking lot of an apartment complex on the southeast side.

Pedestrian killed

MENTOR

Police in Northeast Ohio say lanes on a busy interstate had to be closed after a woman got out of her car and was fatally struck by a semitrailer.

Mentor police say it’s unclear why the woman got out of her car on Interstate 90 about 10:30 a.m. Thursday. Police closed the westbound lanes of the interstate for about 4 1/2 hours. Mentor is 25 miles east of downtown Cleveland.

The 47-year-old woman’s name hasn’t been released.

Driver runs red light; woman, 47, killed

CLEVELAND

Cleveland police say a woman has been killed and a man seriously injured after their car was struck by a motorist who ran a red light and then fled on foot.

The accident occurred about 3 a.m. Friday on Cleveland’s east side. The name of the 33-year-old woman who was a passenger in the car hasn’t been released. She was pronounced dead at a hospital. The 32-year-old driver was taken to the same hospital.

Police say the driver of the other car was speeding when he ran the light.

Not-guilty plea to vehicular homicide

ELYRIA

The driver of a car that crashed into a northern Ohio home and killed a woman sitting on a couch has pleaded not guilty to charges including aggravated vehicular homicide.

Twenty-four-year-old Adrianna Young, of Oberlin, was arraigned this week in Lorain County Common Pleas Court. Police say Young was driving to work July 28 when she swerved off a road in Amherst Township, drove into a yard and went airborne into a home, killing 34-year-old Debra Majkut. Authorities say Majkut’s 5-month-old son was sitting in a baby bouncer that the car flipped over.

Officers say Young told them she swerved to avoid an animal in the road.

Synthetic marijuana overdoses increasing

MANSFIELD

Authorities in north-central Ohio have been looking into synthetic marijuana abuse after a rash of overdoses.

Investigators in the Mansfield area say they saw a dramatic spike in overdoses in November and are trying to determine if it’s connected to the death of a 14-year-old boy.

Two teens found unresponsive in a vehicle this week told deputies that they had been smoking synthetic marijuana.

Authorities in Mansfield say they had 25 overdoses last month and that many of could be attributed to synthetic marijuana use.

Protest over parole

COLUMBUS

A group that has pushed the Ohio Parole Board to allow elderly inmates who’ve served long prison sentences to go freeprotested in downtown Columbus for its third consecutive Christmas.

Universal Support Network founder and president Dessalines Weaver said around 20 people gathered holding signs in front of the parole board’s empty offices on Friday afternoon.

Weaver says he created the group because of the board’s repeated refusals to grant his 62-year-old cousin parole.

Associated Press

Sixty-two-year-old Norman Whiteside went to prison in 1986 after being convicted of conspiracy to commit aggravated murder in Columbus.

Weaver says too many inmates in their 70s and 80s, many of them infirm, aren’t being paroled even though they’re not a threat to anyone.