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Testimony begins in 2012 West Side murder case
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Prosecutors say a man who was shot and killed almost five years ago in a Silliman Street home on the West Side was on disability and there to sell items he fixed up to sell on the internet.
They claimed Tuesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that Kyle Patrick, 21, shot and killed Michael Abighanem, 27, on April 27, 2012, as Abighanem and a friend were at the home to sell a laptop and a videogame system.
Assistant Prosecutor Meghan Brundege said in opening trial statements before Judge John Durkin that Patrick is one of four people who set up Abighanem to be robbed and he hid in a closet and shot and killed him.
Patrick’s attorney, Mark Lavelle, told jurors that Abighanem was killed after he went upstairs in the home to see if the video game system fit into a television set there, and a fight broke out between Abighanem and another man. That was when Abighanem was shot, Lavelle said.
Jurors in the case were picked Monday. Patrick had pleaded guilty in the case in 2014 and was sentenced to 16 years in prison, but filed a motion to have his guilty plea withdrawn. Judge Durkin denied that motion but Patrick appealed and the plea was vacated.
Brundege said Abighanem was a father of two who was to be married shortly before he was killed. Brundege said that after Abighanem went upstairs and shots were fired, all of the people in the house ran away.
“The robbery doesn’t go as planned,” Brundege said. “Mike fought back.”
Later, Brundege said, Patrick was at a friend’s house in Struthers and had a backpack that held a bloody laptop, video game system, clothes and a gun. Patrick told the friend he was involved in a robbery gone bad and put the backpack in a trash bin behind the home.
After he left, the mother of Patrick’s friend called Struthers police, who in turned called Youngstown police, and they found the backpack. Patrick was arrested soon after, Brundege said.