43
Witness describes how double homicide victims died
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A witness in the fifth day of the trial of two men accused in four murders testified Tuesday 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.”
Austin and Hakeem Henderson, 24, are charged with those two murders and the murders of Adam Christian, 23, and Raymond “Ramel” Hayes, 23, on Nov. 13 and 16, 2011, respectively. Prosecutors said the pair were enforcers for a drug ring headed up by co-defendants who will be tried at a later date, Vincent Moorer, 32, and Dwaylyn Colvin, 33.
Testimony began April 26. Judge John M. Durkin is hearing the case.
The Vindicator is withholding the names of certain witnesses in the case at the request of prosecutors.
The reason for the hit was that Slade slapped the girlfriend of Moorer at a bar where she worked, and that retaliation was necessary to protect the group’s reputation, the witness testified.
“It had to be done,” the witness testified. “The team would look bad if they didn’t.”
The person Moorer called on was Austin, the witness testified.
“They put Mike on it,” the witness testified. “Mike said, ‘I had to put them down.’”
Henderson’s role was to drive Austin and Moorer around because he had a valid driver’s license and insurance, so if he was pulled over by police, they would be less likely to search a car he was driving.
However, the witness testified that Austin and Henderson were both upset they were not paid for their roles in the killings of Slade and McCullough.
The witness said Moorer wanted to move Austin to Salem, so he could be set up in a drug house there and perhaps make some money “for comfort,” the witness testified. Austin also told the witness at one point he wanted to kill Moorer and his girlfriend and steal their drugs because he was upset he did not get paid.
Under cross-examination, Austin’s lawyer, Ed Hartwig, said he did not understand if Moorer could order a killing because his girlfriend was slapped, why did he not order Austin to be killed when he threatened Moorer.
The witness said that situation was different because it was a private matter within the organization that people would not be privy to, while the slapping of Moorer’s girlfriend in a public place needed to be avenged because people knew about it.
“Because it’s inside the infrastructure, the public won’t know about it,” the witness testified.
The witness also admitted to Hartwig that he did not give police information on the murders until he was arrested on drug charges himself in April 2015, charges that he is receiving probation for in exchange for his testimony.
However, the witness will serve a 30-month federal sprison sentence for his role in Moorer’s organization, the witness testified.
Testifying after the witness was Dr. Joseph Ohr of the Mahoning County Coroner’s office on the autopsies on all four murder victims and forensic experts from the state Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation.