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Trumbull prosecutor: Murder case shows how drugs and crime destroy lives
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Murder, robbery and felonious assault were the criminal charges that brought four young men and some of their girlfriends to the Trumbull County Courthouse a week ago for a murder trial.
But something else brought everyone together.
“To me, the real reason four individuals are going to prison ... is because of drugs,” Assistant Trumbull County Prosecutor Chris Becker said.
“I don’t know what you have to do to convince people of this, but it’s another of those examples of how drugs ruin kids’ lives,” Becker said.
Becker was talking about Michael Settle, 27, of Niles; Tyler Meardith, 24 of Warren; James Stein, 30, of Warren; and Beau Palmer, 31, of Warren, who are going to prison for between seven years and the rest of their lives for a robbery that went bad on South Street on April 7, 2014.
The crimes they committed also killed one man and seriously injured a woman, Becker said.
Settle was convicted of aggravated murder during a common pleas court trial that ended Sept. 11. He will get a life prison sentence next month.
He was the triggerman in a late-night robbery that killed James Levels, 64, of Warren and injured his longtime friend, Lisa Prater, 49, who lived at the South Street residence.
Meardith fell in with a group of people whose means of making money was selling drugs.
“We were all selling drugs. We were all getting high. We were all partying,” Stein said during the trial.
Diana Boyce Settle testified that she met Settle within a few days of the robbery and murder, and Settle drove her to the house where it happened and bragged that he was involved in the crime.
Despite that information, Boyce still married Settle a couple of months later. A hearing took place to determine whether Boyce was unable to testify against her husband. Judge Peter Kontos ruled that she could.
Tawny Stewart, girlfriend of Beau Palmer, chuckled when Becker asked whether any of the men had jobs. Nobody worked there, she said.
“I sold drugs,” Palmer testified plainly when asked how he paid his bills. And on the day he and others talked about getting rid of the murder weapon, Palmer was on crack cocaine and drinking gin, he testified.
Prater testified that she and Levels had been together a couple of hours at her home that evening, talking and playing backgammon, before Settle and Meardith broke down the front door and entered with a gun and masks on their faces. A backgammon board could be seen on the floor in the crime-scene photos.
But Prater admits she had crack cocaine on the table nearby and had used crack that night. Levels had a felony cocaine-possession conviction in 2012. Prater had one in 2014 stemming from a January 2014 arrest.
Becker said Meardith had no previous criminal convictions before this case. He had only met Palmer, Stein, and Settle three to four months before the robbery and murder, Becker said.
“I don’t know why drug users put themselves in this position,” Becker said, adding that Meardith’s sentence of 18 years in prison is “almost as long as he’s been alive.”
Throughout the trial there were references to a fifth man who drove the car to Prater’s home but did not get out. The Warren man was on the witness list to testify if necessary in the trial.
He, like Stein and Palmer, was in the car before, during and after the robbery and was mentioned by witnesses during the Settle trial.
But unlike Stein, Palmer, Meardith and Settle, the man never was charged.
Becker said the reason the fifth person was not charged rests with the grand jury.
He presented the case against him to a Trumbull County grand jury, but it chose not to indict, Becker said.
“We can only present, and the grand jury indicts,” Becker said.