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Trumbull sees a spike in homicides in early 2017. Are drugs a factor?
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Three people were killed in two days April 24 and April 25 in Liberty, Warren and Mesopotamia, marking one of the sharpest spikes in homicides in Trumbull County history.
Quick arrests in two of the cases mean there’s also been a spike in murder cases now pending in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.
On Jan. 1, the common pleas and juvenile court were handling only six murder cases, but that number has jumped by eight since then to 14.
Only two of the new cases came from Warren, which historically has been the source of most of the county’s homicides. Others have come from Niles and the townships of Liberty, Howland and Mesopotamia.
“There is an upward trend, and we are going forward as best we can, and I expect to effectively handle them,” Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said of the homicide cases.
“Sometimes, we’ve gone as low as six or eight,” Watkins said of pending homicide cases. “I remember one year it was like 21 or 23. That was around 1979. The numbers were higher around 1980, the late ’70s, early ’80s, and then they went down, then they went up a little bit. It’s cyclical.”
Across the United States, violent crime has decreased in recent years, but there have been spikes in violent crime and death, such as in recent times in Chicago, Watkins noted.
Among the new Trumbull County homicide cases this year are two that could result in the death penalty: the killings of two people at a home on state Route 46 in Howland Feb. 25 during in an ongoing dispute, and the killing of an elderly Liberty woman in her home on Church Hill-Hubbard Road. Nasser Hamad is charged with murder in the Howland killings. Sean Clemens is charged in the Liberty case.
Though it’s been a long time since the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office has handled two death-penalty cases at the same time, it’s not the first time that’s happened, Watkins said.
For example, Danny Lee Hill and Charles Lorraine were both tried for capital murders about the same time for 1985-86 homicides. Kenneth Biros and Roderick Davie were both convicted around the same time for 1991 murders.
In the recent homicides, there have been indications of drug abuse by some of the suspects. The most direct tie has been in the Clemens case. Clemens, 33, visited a drug-treatment facility the morning of the crime and is accused of stealing electronics from the victim’s home.
Watkins said there have been drug connections in some cases, but he stopped short of saying drugs are causing the spike.
“We do have a spike right now with homicides, especially when you see three happen in one week,” he said. “It is a concern, but we are certainly seeing more crime associated with drug trafficking and drug use.
“There needs to be a treatment angle, but there needs to be an enforcement angle to protect the general public from offenders who commit violent crimes, because taking drugs is never an excuse to burglarize a home and kill or harm a homeowner or attack individuals for the purpose of obtaining money or personal items in a robbery,” he said.
One result of the spike in homicides has been that five assistant prosecutors are now assigned to handle homicide prosecutions. In recent years, those cases mostly have fallen to Chris Becker, senior trial attorney.
But with three people now indicted in a June 2016 double homicide at Shorty’s Place bar in Warren Township, Assistant Prosecutor Mike Burnett is handling those cases.
And with two murder cases being indicted May 2, Assistant Prosecutor Chuck Morrow was assigned to prosecute Douglas Day in the April 25 shooting death of his girlfriend’s mother in Mesopotamia Township. Assistant Prosecutor Diane Barber is handling the murder charges against Matthew Wilson in the Feb. 10 death of his 5-week-old daughter in Niles.
Becker is assigned to prosecute Clemens, Hamad and Shawn Hope, also known as Shawn Johnson, who is charged with killing a man Dec. 2 in a home on Stephens Avenue Northwest. And Becker is prosecuting William Shakoor in a Jan. 27 shooting death in Liberty Township. Michael Curry was charged with attempted murder in the case, but that charge was dropped last week, and he was released from a Florida jail.
Assistant Prosecutor Stanley Elkins is handling the murder charges in juvenile court against Bresha Meadows, who was 14 when she was charged with fatally shooting her father last July.
Watkins is personally handling many of the details surrounding the Claudia Hoerig murder case. She was charged in the 2007 killing of her husband, Air Force Maj. Karl Hoerig. In recent months, there’s been much activity by the Brazilian and U.S. governments to extradite her to Trumbull County to stand trial.
Among the cases that carried over into 2017 are two from 2015. Jacob Larosa is charged with killing his elderly neighbor in Niles when he was 15. And Arthur Harper is charged with killing his common-law-wife’s son, 3, at their home on High Street near downtown Warren.
Two Trumbull County homicides that occurred Feb. 7 did not produce criminal charges because of the circumstances. Police say Richard Latimer of Howland killed Van Blevins at Blevins’ house in Mineral Ridge. Later that day, Latimer was killed by Howland police in the parking lot of the Giant Eagle store in Howland. State investigators have not completed their investigation into Latimer’s death.
No charges are filed in either death.