Friday, July 21, 2017
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
By his own estimation, city police Detective Sgt. Ronald Rodway has investigated more than 150 homicides, so he knows a gift when he sees one.
A Mahoning County grand jury Thursday agreed with him, indicting two Columbus men in a Nov. 6, 2016, slaying and a double shooting that wounded two women.
Indicted on charges of aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, attempted murder, two counts of felonious assault and two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm with repeat violent-offender specifications are brothers David Emera Deshaw Madumelu, 24, also known as David Kitchen; and Daniel Kitchen, 26, also known as Daniel James Madumelu. They are in the Grafton Correctional Facility, where they were sentenced Wednesday to 17 years each in prison for a string of similar crimes they committed in Columbus.
The two are accused in the death of Joshua Beasley, 34, who was found fatally shot about 5 a.m. Nov. 6 in the parking lot of the Four Seasons Flea Market on McCartney Road just before it opened. Rodway said Beasley had pulled over his motorcycle to text someone when he was killed. He was found lying next to his motorcycle, which was still running.
The other charges the brothers face stem from a double shooting in which two women were wounded the day after Beasley was killed on Cohasset Drive.
It was the double shooting that was one of the reasons Beasley’s death was able to be solved, Rodway said. Rodway said after Beasley was killed, crime-scene personnel found a .40-caliber shell casing. At the Cohasset Drive shooting, two .40-caliber shell casings were found.
On Nov. 16, Rodway found out the two brothers were arrested along with a woman in Columbus in an aggravated robbery and they had a .40-caliber handgun when they were found. He and other detectives drove to Columbus to question them about the Cohasset Drive shooting, Rodway said.
When they interviewed the woman, she had a lawyer, and a Franklin County prosecutor also was in the room with her. The woman said the reason one of the women on Cohasset Drive was shot was because the suspects were afraid the victim would “talk about the incident.”
“What incident?” Rodway asked her.
“That shooting on McCartney Road,” the woman answered.
“We were like, ‘We just got a gift from heaven,’” Rodway said.
Rodway said detectives decided to wait until the Columbus cases were settled with the defendants before presenting the case to a grand jury so they would not have to keep going back and forth between Youngstown and Columbus. Rodway said the way Beasley was killed matched similar crimes the brothers were charged with and ultimately pleaded guilty to in Columbus, where they were suspected of robbing men who were alone with no one around them.
At the time Beasley was killed, it was early in the morning and he was stopped on his motorcycle, Rodway said. “He had stopped to text a girl,” Rodway said.
The brothers both were sentenced Wednesday in Frankln County Common Pleas Court to 17 years in prison, with 11 years for charges of aggravated robbery and six years for firearm specifications.