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Charge filed in funeral shooting
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Police have filed a weapons charge against a man they say was involved in a shooting at a funeral.
Vernon Johnson, 22, is charged in municipal court with being a felon in possession of a firearm. Police still are looking for him.
Johnson is accused of having a weapon at a March 31 funeral for homicide victim Marquise Shelton at the New Vision New Day Church at Everett and Irma avenues in the Brownlee Woods area of the South Side.
No one was injured in the shooting at the services, which occurred when two people got into an argument inside and one person went outside to retrieve a gun and began firing. The church was not hit by gunfire, but several cars were damaged.
U.S. marshals have been looking for Johnson but have not been able to find him.
Police also are searching for the man they say is a suspect in the death of Shelton, Jermail D. Holloway, 23, who faces a charge of discharging a firearm into a habitation in the death of Shelton, also 23, who was shot and killed March 20 inside his Idora Avenue home.
Police said Shelton was shot after he and Holloway argued over the results of a videogame. Holloway has been on the run since Shelton’s death.
Johnson had faced a weapons charge in June 2015, when he was accused of shooting himself in the hand in Boardman, then falsely reporting a robbery to cover up the crime.
Court records show he pleaded no contest in that case to a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon and was sentenced to time served in the Mahoning County jail, where he served 30 days while awaiting the outcome of his case. Court records also show he had to forfeit the gun he had at the time to the township police department.