Price gets 20-year sentence for fatal shooting

YOUNGSTOWN — A man who pleaded guilty to a fatal February shooting outside a South Side bar has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Earl Price, 42, drew the sentence this morning from Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Price had pleaded guilty in July on the day jury selection for his trial was to begin, to charges of voluntary manslaughter and being a felon in possession of a firearm with firearm specifications and repeat-violent-offender specifications.

Price was charged in the death of 33-year-old DeJuan Thomas, who was fatally shot Feb. 7 outside the Partners Jazz and Blues Lounge on Oak Hill Avenue after the two argued inside.

Thomas was shot outside the bar about 1 a.m. and later died from his wounds in St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital.

At the time he was killed, Thomas was out on bond awaiting trial in an April 2013 homicide. He was one of two men charged in the death of 26-year-old Kristopher Stuart inside Stuart’s Elm Street home April 29, 2013.