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Police probe third slaying in four days
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Despite the police department’s being on pace to seize a record number of guns this year, Police Chief Robin Lees said Wednesday it is not enough to stop others from carrying and using guns to settle personal disputes.
Lees was speaking in the aftermath of the city’s third homicide since Saturday after Colin Brown, 45, was shot and killed about 11:15 p.m. Tuesday in the restroom of The Last Call Bar and Grill, 2929 South Ave. U.S. Marshals and city police searched for the suspect, Johnny Wallace III, 23, Wednesday. City police caught him about 9:30 p.m. in the 700 block of West LaClede Avenue with assistance from the marshals.
About 1:20 a.m. Tuesday, Jerry Franklin, 26, of Garfield Street, Struthers, was fatally shot in the parking lot of the Logan Avenue Gas Mart, 1704 Logan Ave. Police have no suspects in that case.
On Saturday, Tyler Kitchen, 19, was fatally shot by a man police said he was trying to rob. Police said the shooter has a concealed-carry permit. That case is still under investigation.
“Our officers have taken a record number of guns off the street, which you would like to think would have stopped some of these spontaneous acts of violence,” Lees said. “Apparently it’s not enough. There’s a segment of the population that acts recklessly without any thought of the consequences.”
In 2017, for the third year in a row, police are on pace to seize more guns than in the previous year. Lees said the department has seized 158 guns so far in 2017, 114 of them from people who were arrested and either possessed or used a gun illegally.
Capt. Brad Blackburn, chief of detectives, said Brown and Wallace knew each other, but they were not friends. No witnesses who talked to detectives noticed the pair arguing inside the bar, yet Wallace is believed to have followed Brown into the restroom to shoot him.
People inside heard a loud noise, and some people recognized it as a gunshot, Blackburn said. He said several people ran out, Wallace probably among them.
Tuesday afternoon, Brown’s sister, April Brown, and mother, Loretta Mackey, were planning his funeral. April Brown said her brother taught art to children and was very well-liked.
“He was an amazing person,” April Brown said. “He was very giving, really funny and very outgoing.”
“He was very generous of his time,” his mother added.
For April Brown and her mother, this is the second member of their family to die; an older brother had died of cancer, April Brown said.
“He lived to make people laugh and he did it naturally,” April Brown said of Colin.
Blackburn said there is no distinct pattern for the recent spate of homicides. He said it is not uncommon in the city to have lulls in violent crime, then a surge.
“It happens several times a year,” Blackburn said. “There’s no rhyme or reason.”
Brown’s death gives the city 24 homicides for 2017, up from a revised total of 19 in 2016.
Blackburn said that over the last 10 years, the city has averaged 24.8 homicides a year. Four weeks remain in 2017.
Lees said none of the recent homicides are related and there was not much police could have done to prevent them unless they were right there to intervene before shots were fired. He said more domestic or confrontational homicides are taking the place of slayings committed by gangs or in the drug trade, although a large number of the city’s homicides are still drug-related.
Still, Lees said, there is nothing much that can be done when someone gets into an argument and decides to end it with gunfire.
“The fact that one man would follow another into a bathroom and shoot him, in most people’s standards, is outrageous,” Lees said. “Yet, that is what happened.”