Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Staff report
WARREN
Scott E. Rockenfelder Jr., 28, of Elm Road was killed and a female with him suffered a gunshot wound while they were in a car on Main Avenue Southwest at 2:18 a.m. Tuesday.
Responding police officers found their car at 1201 Main Ave. at 2nd Street in front of Sterling-McCullough Williams Funeral Home.
The 27-year-old woman called 911, telling a dispatcher she and the male had both been shot.
Rockenfelder was pronounced dead at 3:10 a.m. at Trumbull Regional Medical Center. The female was taken to another hospital for treatment.
Police are not saying whether they have a theory as to what led to the shootings.
Rockenfelder was named in 25 police reports dating back to 2006, but he was a victim or witness in many of them. He had been booked into the Trumbull County jail 15 times since 2007, according to jail records. He was sentenced to prison in 2011 on convictions for being a felon in possession of a firearm and receiving stolen property.
If Rockenfelder’s death is ruled a homicide, it would raise the city’s total to at least 12 for the year. The city had only four homicides in 2016.
A man who spoke to The Vindicator from the neighborhood said that area of the city, which is a short distance south of downtown, has had its share of drug activity.
One person overdosed and fell unconscious while driving north on Main Avenue while a funeral procession was lined up on Main Avenue, said the man, who declined to give his name.
In a separate incident, a female headed east on Second Street became unconscious from an overdose and drove off past the funeral home and into the woods behind it.
She was revived with the opiate-reversal drug naloxone and survived.