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Testimony continues in drug/murder trial
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A woman testified in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that the first of four people killed on the East Side during 2011 and 2012 was ill from too much partying and went outside to “get sick” just before he was shot.
Testifying on Wednesday before Judge John M. Durkin in the trials of Michael Austin, 22 and Hakeem Henderson, 24, who both face four counts of aggravated murder in three separate shootings, the woman also said her cousin, Raymond “Ramel” Hayes, 23, barred the door from the outside when she heard gunfire when Adam Christian, 23, who was shot Nov. 13, 2011, in a Woodcrest Avenue parking lot.
Hayes was found dead three days later at Gerwig and Knapp streets in the Sharon Line area of the East Side, shot 18 times. His body had 30 bullet holes. Austin and Henderson also are charged with that crime.
Besides the deaths of Hayes and Christian, the pair also are charged with the deaths of Ryan Keith Slade, 20, and Keara McCullough, 19, who were both found in September 2012 shot to death in a car on Benford Lane.
The woman said under direct examination from Assistant Prosecutor Martin Desmond she managed to get outside and check on Christian, who she said had bullet wounds to the face and elbow. She said she was worried Hayes had shot him because Hayes had a gun, but the woman testified that Christian told her, “Mike” had shot him.
Christian did not give a last name and it was hard for him to talk, the woman testified.
“He was trying to talk but he was spitting up blood,” the woman testified.
Testimony began Tuesday in the case against Henderson and Austin, who prosecutors said were enforcers and carried out murders and other shootings for a drug ring headed up by Dwaylyn Colvin, 33, who will go on trial at a later date along with three other people. Colvin already is serving an 11-year prison sentence for selling drugs.
Authorities have said Christian was a former leader of the Vic Boyz street gang and that Hayes was killed because he knew too much about Christian’s murder.
The witness admitted under cross-examination from Austin’s attorney, Ed Hartwig, that she was very high the night Christian was killed and that she never told police the night Christian was shot that Christian said who had shot him.
She did not speak to the police again for more than four years, and she told them at their last meeting about what Christian said, she testified.
Under cross-examination by one of Henderson’s attorneys, Rhys Cartwright-Jones, the witness said she did not know Henderson and had never heard of him until the trial.
After Hayes was killed, the witness testified she left town along with another person who was present the night Christian was killed. When asked why by Desmond, she said: “Because I thought I might be next.”
In the afternoon, jurors heard 911 tapes of the shooting that led to Christian’s death. In one of the tapes, several women can be heard howling and wailing in the background while another woman calmly talks over them and tells Christian to hang on.
“Calm down, Adam, help is coming,” the woman said. “Please, just listen to our voices. Please. Help is coming, Adam.”