Witness: Murder suspect told him Keara McCullough just in wrong place, not target

YOUNGSTOWN

A witness in the fifth day of trial of two men accused in four murders testified today about how one of the defendants told him how the victims in two of those murders died.

The witness said in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that Michael Austin, 22, told him about a week after the September 2012 homicides of Ryan Slade, 20 and Keara McCullough, 19, who were found shot to death in a car on Benford Lane, that the pair were ambushed in the car and that shooters approached the car from both sides to kill them.

The witness said McCullough was not a target of the murder but happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“She wasn’t supposed to be there,” the witness said of McCullough. “She was just a casualty.”

Read more about this and other witnesses in the case today in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.