29-year-old Liberty man jailed in connection with fatal hit-skip

WARREN — Daniel J. Waggoner Jr., 29, of James Lane in Liberty Township, was booked into the Trumbull County jail early today on charges connected to the hit-skip crash that killed a man on Youngstown Road last weekend.

Waggoner is charged in Warren Municipal Court with two felony charges — tampering with evidence and failure to stop after an accident — and a misdemeanor charge of falsification.

No date appears in court records for his arraignment hearing.

He’s accused of being the driver who hit pedestrian Paul A. Rose, 61, of Hazelwood Avenue Southeast on U.S. Route 422 near Rogers Avenue at 9:40 p.m. Saturday, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said. Rose later died at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital.

Troopers with the Ohio State Highway Patrol announced this week that they had a person of interest in the case after a Warren police detective noticed a car in Liberty that matched the description given of the car involved in the Rose crash.

Waggoner also has several other pending charges in Warren Municipal Court, including drunken driving, failing to drive in marked lanes, felony drug possession, misdemeanor drug possession and misdemeanor drug paraphernalia possession — all filed July 11 by the patrol. He was arraigned on those charges earlier.

A woman, Michelle Smith, 27, of Girard has also been charged with misdemeanor falsification in the case, the patrol said.