Friday, June 16, 2017
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Gallery
Market Street has long been known as one of the city’s main hot spots. It lived up to its reputation Thursday in terms of crime.
Police responded to a homicide at 8 a.m. in the Uptown area. After that, a robbery suspect who led city police on a chase to the turnpike was killed after he got on Interstate 680 going the wrong way. He collided head on with a tractor-trailer just south of the Market Street exit.
The Mahoning County Coroner’s office said the man dead in the chase is Steven Mango, 47, of Hanoverton, who served prison time for killing a man in a police chase in 2001.
Officer Carlos Rivera was involved in both cases. Rivera was one of the first to respond to the Uptown homicide. About 31/2 hours later, he ran over a stop stick that Boardman police had laid down on Western Reserve Road trying to catch Mango, and got a flat tire.
Police Chief Robin Lees said such days are the nature of police work.
“It’s the nature of the job,” Lees said. “You go from boredom to chaotic danger at times.”
Both incidents attracted plenty of onlookers.
People watched the accident cleanup from a bridge on Market Street over I-680. They also watched investigators process the homicide scene from the Rite Aid at the corner of East Indianola Avenue and Market Street during the height of rush hour.
A woman later identified as Elizabeth Pledger-Stewart, 46, of Boardman, was driving to work north on Market Street when a man later identified as Dale Williams, 59, of Youngstown, in a van, rammed into the back of her car. This sent the car into a storefront between Market Street and West Hylda Avenue. The man then shot the woman several times, to the horror of a woman who was in the Rite Aid parking lot.
“It was evil,” the witness said. “I never thought I would see this in real life ... It was just cold blooded.”
The 31-year-old witness was afraid to give her name but said Williams stood over Pledger-Stewart and fired several shots.
As that was happening, city police officer Rusty Davis was stuck in traffic and went to investigate. He confronted the man, who stopped shooting and surrendered peacefully.
Pledger-Stewart died at St. Elizabeth Health Center of several gunshot wounds.
Boardman police had taken a report from Pledger-Stewart about 10:15 p.m. Wednesday. She met an officer at the township police station and told the officer Williams had come to her home but was upset when she refused to get into his van.
Reports said Williams began sending threatening text messages, including one saying he was “going to catch her in the streets.”
Pledger-Stewart told police Williams threatened her before but not like this. She was advised on how to obtain a protection order, reports said.
City police Lt. Doug Bobovnyik confirmed Williams and Pledger-Stewart had a relationship.
“It looks like he planned this,” Bobovnyik said.
Pledger-Stewart had been on her way to work at V&V Appliance. Her supervisors, Jonathan Rickert and Sue Swogger, said she had worked there for the last few years.
“She was a great person. A great employee,” Rickert said. “She always had a pleasant attitude,”
“She had a lot of friends here,” Swogger added.
Later in the morning, about 10 a.m., city police were notified by Austintown police to be on the lookout for a blue Chevrolet pickup truck with a cap on it. The driver was a suspect in the robbery of the Dollar Tree on Mahoning Avenue and had apparently punched an employee and had taken some cash before driving away, going east on Mahoning Avenue toward Youngstown.
The truck was spotted a little after 11 a.m. near Shirley Road. When officers tried to pull it over, it sped toward the freeway and got on I-680 heading south. Rivera was in one of the two cars and officer Pat Mulligan was in the other. The chase proceeded to Boardman and arrangements were made for township police to lay stop sticks at the Western Reserve exit.
Rivera bowed out after hitting one of the sticks.
The truck turned around in a median just before the turnpike and headed south in the southbound lane of I-680. At some point, he got off the freeway and got back going north in the southbound lanes of I-680. The patrol supervisor had already ordered all Youngstown units to stop the pursuit and other cars were deployed to exit ramps hoping to catch the truck. But he rammed head-on into a tractor-trailer just south of the Market Street exit ramp.
Mango was killed, and the road was closed for most of the afternoon. The driver of the tractor-trailer managed to walk away, witnesses said.
In February 2001, Mango was chased by Boardman and city police following a daytime robbery of a Boardman restaurant into Youngstown where he rammed head-on into a car at the intersection of Youngstown-Poland Road and Midlothian Boulevard. Phillip Swantner, 34, of Harvey Street, died about a month later from his injuries.
Online court records do not show what happened when the case went to a grand jury. They only show it being bound over from county court to common pleas court.
Lees said several factors are taken into account when a chase is initiated, including the time of day, traffic, road conditions and the offense involved.
Patrol supervisors monitor pursuits and can terminate them, Lees said.
“They’re in the best position to know the circumstances,” Lees said. He said the department’s pursuit policy states that officers are never to pursue a vehicle the wrong way. They are to parallel the vehicle in order to warn other motorists in the path of the pursued vehicle and also to try and close down other ramps to stop traffic from entering the freeway. He said police were trying to do these things when the crash happened.
City police advised Boardman police that the chase was entering the township via southbound I-680. Several township police officers assisted in the pursuit.
Boardman Police Chief Jack Nichols, who was among those who assisted YPD, said he ordered his officers to stand down after the suspect turned around on I-680 and exited the township.
Nichols said the decision to pursue a suspect is based on numerous factors, such as the severity of the crime, road conditions and traffic.
Lees said those officers who were working day shift Thursday are all veteran officers, but he added younger officers also get the same experience rather quickly because of the types of challenges they face in being a police officer in an urban area.
“They’re [younger officers] pretty well prepared for this,” Lees said.