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Murder victim was known to police
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A man who was found shot to death Wednesday evening on a South Side sidewalk was a tenant in a house boarded up by the city last year because it was declared a nuisance over drug sales.
Brandon Treharn, 30, of Gaither Street, was named in a complaint when the city asked a judge to declare the East Boston Avenue home within sight of Taft Elementary a nuisance because of drug dealing.
A judge agreed, and the home was boarded up June 30, 2016.
Treharn was found about 7 p.m. Wednesday on a sidewalk in the 900 block of East Pasadena Avenue, dead from several gunshot wounds. A man who was with him was also wounded in the shoulder. That man was found about a block away, where he had run to call for help.
Lt. Doug Bobovnyik said Thursday that detectives had no suspects.
Municipal court records show 28 cases filed against Treharn between 2006 and 2017.
In his last case in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, Treharn was sentenced Nov. 23, 2016, to three years’ probation on a third- degree felony charge of possession of drugs. However, less than two weeks later he was arrested again on a probation violation. Court records do not show what the violation was.
He was given a sentence of six months in jail on the probation violation, according to court records.
Around the time his house was boarded up last year, Treharn was also a victim of his landlord, Wayne Martin, 36, Martin’s brother Terrell, 37, and others who were accused of robbing, beating, kidnapping and shooting Treharn in a dispute over money.
Wayne Martin was sentenced to prison for those crimes in October after pleading guilty. Cases against two other defendants were dismissed.
Terrell Martin remains jailed on that case and on an aggravated-murder charge tied to the February murder of a man who was found in a burning SUV behind a vacant home on the South Side.
Bobovnyik said detectives have found nothing in the early stages of the investigation that leads them to believe Treharn’s death is related to the robbery and kidnapping case where he was a victim.
Treharn’s death gives the city 20 homicides for 2017. In 2016, Youngstown had 18 homicides.