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Youngstown cops find guns after chase into Campbell
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Police say they found two guns Sunday evening where a chase began on the North Side that ended after a Campbell police officer rammed the suspect’s car.
Brandon Liggens, 36, of Youngstown is in Mahoning County jail and is expected to be arraigned today in municipal court on charges of failure to comply with the order or signal of a police officer, endangering children, felonious assault on a police officer, assault on a health care professional, driving under suspension and several other traffic charges.
Reports said Liggens was arrested after a Campbell police cruiser rammed the car he was driving at Albert Street and Victor Avenue. And that came after Liggens rammed a cruiser driven by Youngstown Police Detective Sgt. Ed Kenney on McCartney Road as Kenney was trying to block traffic to keep other vehicles away from the chase, the report says.
After Kenney’s cruiser was hit, the Campbell officer radioed his supervisor for permission to ram the vehicle Liggens was driving to stop it, reports said. Kenney was not injured.
When the car was pulled over, officers had to break a window to unlock the door, reports said. Liggens had to be pulled out and he would not allow officers to handcuff him so he was stunned with an electronic stun weapon, reports said. Reports said Liggens was placed in an ambulance and kicked a paramedic in the face while inside it. He was taken to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital to be examined for any injuries, then taken to the jail.
Two children who were in the car also were taken to St. Elizabeth to be examined. Reports did not list the ages of the children.
The chase began about 9:50 p.m., when officer Brandon Caraway, who was on patrol on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, saw a man running on foot off the Madison Avenue Expressway in front of his cruiser. Shortly after, the occupants of a vehicle flagged down Caraway and told them someone in a white car was shooting at another car on the expressway.
Caraway and other officers looked for the white car and the runner, who was identified as Liggens, and found him on Wirt Street, next to a white car, leaning over a guardrail with a man and a woman nearby. Reports said when Caraway and other officers told the man to get on the ground, the man and woman got on the ground, but Liggens ran to the car and drove away. Reports said as officers chased the car, they could see two people in the backseat who were waving to the officers as if they wanted out of the car, reports said. Those were the children who were later found, reports said.
The car went through several North Side streets to the East Side, then Wilson Avenue into Campbell, where Campbell police joined the chase with Youngstown officers following. At one point, one of the tires on the car Liggens was driving exploded in a shower of sparks, but he refused to stop.
After the chase, police went back to where the chase started with a Campbell police dog and his handler and found a .44-Magnum revolver and a 7.62-mm semiautomatic rifle, reports said.