Police investigate charred body found Thursday morning on East Side

November 27, 2015 at 12:03a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

Police are investigating after a partially burned body was found early Thursday on Youngstown’s East Side.

The body was discovered about 1:15 a.m. near Liberty Road and Wardle Avenue.

Officers responded to a 911 call from a nearby home, Lt. Doug Bobovnyik of the detective bureau said.

Police are following leads but have not determined the victim’s identity. The victim is described as a thin black man in his early 20s between 5 feet 8 inches and 5 feet 10 inches tall. At the time of his death, he appears to have been wearing blue jeans, tennis shoes and a white shirt.

Officers found blood in the street nearby, though that does not necessarily indicate that the man died in the street, Bobovnyik said.

The Mahoning County Coroner’s Office will conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death.

The death is being investigated as a homicide. If ruled a homicide, it would be the city’s sixth this month and the third in which a body was burned. It would bring the number of homicides so far this year to 22, compared with a total of 19 in 2014.

Police are working to identify a man found dead Nov. 12 in a burned car in an Otis Street parking lot.

The car was registered to Carol Staten, a former city schools teacher who has been appointed to serve on the new Youngstown Academic Distress Commission, and her son, Christopher Staten, 25.

Earlier in the month, officers found a woman dead in her Cleveland Street home after being beaten and burned. The victim, Erika Huff, 46, died Nov. 6.

A Mahoning County grand jury indicted Lance Hundley, 46, in the death of Huff, the arson and the beating of Huff’s mother.