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Man indicted for West Side homicide
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A Mahoning County grand jury indicted a man in the July slaying of his stepmother.
James Jarrell, 33, is charged with aggravated murder, murder, aggravated robbery, tampering with evidence and receiving stolen property. He is in the county jail pending arraignment Sept. 29 in common pleas court before Judge R. Scott Krichbaum.
Jarrell was brought back to Youngstown by detectives Wednesday from the Allegheny County jail in Pittsburgh, where he had been held since he was arrested by police there on a charge of receiving stolen property after he was found driving the victim’s car.
Jarrell is accused of the July 7 death of Tina Jarrell, 55, who was found dead in the kitchen of her Wellington Avenue home on the West Side.
An arrest report for Jarrell on Wednesday said he refused to talk to the detectives who came to take him back to Youngstown.
Reports said Tina Jarrell was found by her husband, Robert Jarrell, after he returned from work about 11:35 p.m.
Reports said when officers first arrived, they found her face down on the living-room floor covered in blood and not breathing. Robert Jarrell and another man were inside, and one of the men was crying, reports said.
Police still have not said how Tina Jarrell died.
Police had been waiting to secure an indictment because they had sent evidence away to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
Common pleas court records show James Jarrell has been to prison at least three times.
In 2003, he was sentenced to a year in prison on charges of theft and breaking and entering after he failed to appear in the county’s drug court.
In 2006, records show Jarrell was given a four-year sentence on a charge of felonious assault, and in 2011 he was given a three-year sentence after pleading guilty to three counts of breaking and entering as well as single counts of receiving stolen property and failure to comply with the order or signal of a police officer.