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Father of missing Warren woman asks if he can leave prison for daughter’s funeral
VINDICATOR EXCLUSIVE
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Carl Binion, 58, father of Alicia Binion, 36, who has been missing since a Dec. 2 homicide at 2313 Stephens Ave. NW, was sentenced Monday to three years in prison for felonious assault and aggravated burglary .
While standing before Judge W. Wyatt McKay of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, Carl Binion asked Judge McKay if he’ll be able to leave prison for his daughter’s funeral if she turns out to have been killed, too.
Judge McKay told Binion that would be up to jail or prison officials.
The prison sentence was for a March 10 incident in which Binion entered a neighbor’s house and threatened the neighbor with a knife while shouting about “receiving bad drugs from someone,” police said.
The other man grabbed a baseball bat and struck Binion in the head, causing a laceration. Binion has been in the Trumbull County jail since just after the incident.
Last Friday’s homicide and Carl Binion’s felonious assault and aggravated burglary are far from the only incidents in police records involving the Binions or the home where Carl Binion and Alicia Binion live on Stephens.
In fact, a Vindicator records search shows that police have been called to the home at 2313 Stephens 35 times since February 2013. Carl Binion’s girlfriend, Christine M. Tyson, 47, died at the house Dec. 8, 2015, after a night of heavy drinking. An autopsy indicated she died of a heart problem.
In the Dec. 2 incident, John P. Kellar, 41, of Niles, was found dead inside the home. His death was ruled a homicide as a result of one or more gunshot wounds.
Kellar’s fiance, 22, told police she and Alicia Binion had been forced into a van after a man named Shawn had shot Kellar.
The younger woman escaped from the van while Shawn Johnson, 49, and Alicia Binion were inside Rocky’s Am Pm Food Mart on West Market Street a short time later. Johnson has since been charged with murder but has not been located.
On Dec. 8, 2015, Carl Binion called 911 at 7 a.m. to report that Tyson was on the bathroom floor unresponsive. Police found her dead.
Binion said he found Tyson asleep on the floor about 3:30 a.m. and left her there. That was not terribly unusual because she was a heavy drinker, he said.
The Trumbull County coroner later ruled her death to be the result of an enlarged heart. Her blood-alcohol level was 0.15, almost twice the level considered legal to drive an automobile.
Neighbors interviewed by The Vindicator say cars coming and going and other things they know indicate to them that Carl Binion’s home has been a drug house for a while now, even while he was in jail.
According to police records, on May 20 this year, an employee of Trumbull County Children Services called Warren police to relay information from someone who had called the CSB emergency line to report concerns about “a 3-month-old in this home, which has known drug activity.”
One of Carl Binion’s daughters was living there at the time with a male who pulled out a gun and had threatened someone with it, according to the CSB worker. Police went to the home but found it “dark,” with no answer at the door, police said.
Sgt. Joe Kistler, a supervisor in the detective division of the Warren Police Department, said he’s not been told that the house was of any special concern for illegal activity such as drug dealing. Lt. Greg Hoso, commander of the street crimes unit, which investigates illegal drug activity, could not be reached to comment.
“It’s a drug house. That’s all it is,” one neighbor told The Vindicator this week. “A car pulls in and it’s there only a minute or two and leaves. Cars are coming and going all the time.”
The neighbor said Johnson lived at Carl Binion’s house “a couple months.” “I don’t want a drive-by,” the neighbor said when asked for his name.
Another neighbor said it’s “still sad” that someone died in the house, even though it’s a “drug house,” adding, “It was an amazing neighborhood for years” but it has seen changes in “the last few years.”
Among the 35 calls for service in recent years, several of the most recent were concerns about dogs on the property. Police found nothing wrong on two occasions.
On Nov. 4, 2015, Carl Binion called police to report that a man he knew, 27, came to his front door threatening to assault him, so Carl assaulted the other man first and grabbed a bat by the front door. The man and a woman behind him fled.
On Sept. 27, 2015, he reported that he had been incarcerated for a month, and when he returned home, his wallet was not where he left it. He also checked with his bank and found that someone had taken all of the money out.
Alicia and two other women were staying in the house while he was gone, he said.
Other calls in past years have been about fights and assaults in the house and cars coming and going and people hollering at midnight or 2 a.m., two possible overdoses and other ambulance calls.
On Feb. 16, 2013, a nurse at ValleyCare Trumbull Memorial Hospital reported that Binion had called the hospital’s intensive care unit and threatened to kill her because the nurse would not give out information about his wife, who was a patient at the hospital.