Jurors view video of robbery

May 7, 2015 at 12:00a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

City patrolman Robert Giovanni was a busy man in October 2013.

Giovanni testified before Judge Lou A. D’Apolito in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on Wednesday about two robberies he responded to that month. He also helped to arrest the defendant, Joseph Mascarella, and uncover what the prosecutors say are robberies Mascarella is accused of committing.

Mascarella, 20, is on trial before Judge Lou D’Apolito on 15 counts of aggravated robbery for robbing six separate South Side businesses between Sept. 30 and Oct. 18, 2013.

Prosecutors said two people carried out the robberies, running into stores with their faces covered and one of them holding a gun. A third person was driving a getaway car but has since been killed. Another co-defendant pleaded guilty to his role in five of the robberies in December.

Giovanni responded to two of those robberies, an Oct. 8, 2013, robbery of a Family Dollar store on Market Street and an Oct. 12, 2013, robbery of a Taco Bell, also on Market Street.

For the first robbery, jurors watched video from the store shot from several angles, showing two males wearing baseball caps, hooded sweatshirts and their faces covered. They run into the store, herd two employees behind the counter, and force one employee to take the money out of the cash register and another to open the safe. A shot also was fired, but it is hard to tell that from the video. The robbers got cash, coins and cigarettes before running out the front door. One of the robbers also had a backpack.

In the Taco Bell robbery, the robbers took the cash-register drawer, Giovanni said. Later, he was called back to the Family Dollar, where employees found the bullet fired in the Oct. 8 robbery in a storage tote while they were stocking shelves.

The next day, Giovanni assisted detectives who were searching a home on Ellenwood Avenue, where the car believed to be used in the robberies was found. Giovanni said hidden behind a pile of wood in the backyard he found cash-register drawers, credit cards and cash, as well as other material from the robberies.

Mascarella also was found in that home hiding in a space beneath the basement stairs, Giovanni said.

Before testimony began for the day, Judge D’Apolito denied a defense motion made Tuesday for a mistrial. Atty. Jeff Limbian made the motion after a witness said he looked at a photo lineup provided by prosecutors and picked Mascarella out of that lineup, but there was no documentation of that lineup before the trial.

Ted Cougras, an employee in one of the stores that Mascarella is accused of robbing, testified that even though the robbers had their faces covered with masks, he recognized Mascarella as the man who held a gun to his head. He said he could recognize him because he knew what kind of eyes Mascarella had and the structure of his face.

“I’ll never forget those eyes,” Cougras said.

Judge D’Apolito also granted a request by prosecutors to have two witnesses who failed to show up to testify jailed as material witnesses if they should be found.