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Warren police close case of city woman who killed 2 men in car, self
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Police say they still don’t know what led up to the Aug. 3 shooting deaths of three people in a car on Southern Boulevard Northwest, but they believe Brandy M. Joseph, 37, of Merriweather Street Northwest, killed the two men in the car.
The Trumbull County coroner ruled that Joseph shot herself to death. But she also shot and killed Devonte L. West, 24, of Hamilton Street Southwest, and Ju’wantae A. Harbin, 18, of Douglas Street Northwest, police say.
West and Joseph were dead at the scene. Harbin, a 2017 graduate of Warren G. Harding High School, died later at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital. The deaths of West and Harbin were homicides.
Sgt. Joe Kistler of the Warren Police Department said the conclusion that Joseph killed the men comes from ballistics testing done by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and eyewitness testimony from two people.
The gun evidence indicated that the same gun was used to kill all three people, Kistler said.
He closed the case Nov. 15 after receiving the final ballistic results. Police recovered the gun used in the killings, and they believe Joseph is the only person who fired it.
Police received 911 calls at 7:13 p.m. from people seeing a car travel south on Southern and hearing gunshots coming from the car. The car then failed to navigate a curve and hit a house at the corner of Southern Boulevard and Solar Street.
Police say after the car came to rest, there were more gunshots.
West was the driver, and Harbin was the front-seat passenger. Joseph was in the back seat.
Two witnesses saw the car before it crashed and “what took place after it crashed,” Kistler said, declining to elaborate.
Kistler said he believes some sort of disagreement between West and Joseph may have been the reason for the gunfire. There was some history between Joseph and West, but “no connection” between her and Harbin, leading Kistler to believe Harbin was an “innocent victim.”
Kistler said he doesn’t know what kind of conflict led to the shootings. “It’s a mystery to me. It’s a mystery to everyone,” Kistler said.
Clive Harbin, grandfather of Ju’wantae Harbin, told The Vindicator on Monday his grandson was catching a ride home to borrow his mother’s car at the time of the killings.
His grandson played defensive end for the Warren G. Harding Raiders for three years and had college scholarship offers. Ju’wantae had experienced a concussion and had not accepted any of the scholarship offers.
Clive Harbin said he also thinks his grandson was an innocent victim, but cited a biblical reference that warns of being in the wrong company.
“Jesus in his parable says you can be innocent, but if you hang with evil, the same thing can happen to you as the evil one,” he said.
Nakila West, mother of Devonte West, said her son had just learned that same day that he had been accepted into nursing school at Kent State University.
West said the killings shocked her.
“I have no clue what could have triggered it, what they could have been doing with her,” she said of Joseph, who was mother of five children and a grandmother.
The case was among several in August, with Heaven L. Townsend, 21, of Hillman Way in Youngstown being found shot to death outside a building in the Fairview Gardens apartments on Duke Street Southwest Aug. 19.
William L. Williams, 19, of Freeman Street Northwest was also found dead in a field in the 2400 block of Northwest Boulevard Northwest on Aug. 20.
Kistler said police don’t know of any link between the two cases, which were both ruled homicides.
Police are likewise still investigating the death of Michael C. Walker, 31, of Parkman Road Northwest, who was found dead in a burned minivan July 24 in a remote area of Pershing Avenue Southwest near Martin Luther King Boulevard Southwest.
The city has had 11 homicides this year, a spike over the four recorded in 2016.