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Man pleads guilty in 2014 murder
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Prosecutors are recommending 25 years in prison for a man who pleaded guilty to a shooting death he caused as a juvenile.
Stashawn Dates, 20, pleaded guilty Monday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court before Judge Lou D’Apolito to charges of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of aggravated robbery and two counts of felonious assault with firearm specifications attached to all counts.
Dates was first charged as a juvenile for the death of Jesse Daviduk, 21, who died several days after being shot Sept. 15, 2014, in a van at East Dewey and South avenues.
Prosecutors say Daviduk was shot during a drug deal that went awry.
Dates will be sentenced after a presentence investigation. He was supposed to go on trial Monday.
Reports said Daviduk was a passenger in a van during a drug deal when he was shot.
Daviduk died Oct. 2, 2014, of his wounds.
The van’s driver told police he picked up Daviduk in Struthers. Then they used the victim’s phone to arrange drug buys at the intersection, reports said. When they arrived, two men were waiting, and one man jumped in the van and sat behind Daviduk.
The man who jumped in the van pulled a semiautomatic handgun and said, “I want everything.” The victim turned around, and the man with the gun shot the victim, reports said.
The van driver drove away after he heard the gunshot, reports said. The gunman, who police said was Dates, then jumped out of the moving van as the driver was taking Daviduk to the hospital.
After he was questioned by detectives, police charged Dates with shooting Daviduk. Dates was also in the van, and he was found a short distance away by ambulance crews, passed out in the street.