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Prosecutor: Defendants brought ‘hell on Earth to Youngstown
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Prosecutors said two Columbus men brought “hell on Earth in Youngstown, Ohio” in a shooting that killed a man and wounded two women in November 2016.
Assistant Prosecutor Michael Yacovone told jurors Tuesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court how investigators believe half-brothers David Madumelu, 26, and Daniel Kitchen, 26, killed Joshua Beasley of Masury on Nov. 6, 2016, in the McCartney Road parking lot of Four Seasons Flea Market and wounded two women the next day in a shooting on Cohasset Drive on the South Side.
Police said Madumelu and Kitchen saw Beasley, 36, texting someone in the parking lot at 2:30 a.m. and shot and robbed him.
They took Beasley’s wallet and later threw it out the window of their car because there was no money in it, Yacovone said.
“Beasley didn’t have a dime on him,” Yacovone said. “He was broke.”
The women were shot the next day during a fight with the two men. They were witnesses to Beasley’s death, Yacovone said.
Defense attorneys Jim Wise and Tom Zena gave brief opening statements, asking jurors to keep an open mind until they hear all the evidence.
Testimony began before Visiting Judge Thomas Pokorny after a jury in the case was picked Monday.
Yacovone told jurors Madumelu and Kitchen were in a car with two women on McCartney Road when they spied Beasley in the parking lot on his motorcycle.
Yacovone said Kitchen drove the car up to Beasley and had one of the women ask him for directions to distract him. Madumelu then got out of the car and demanded Beasley give him his wallet. Yacovone said Beasley responded, “Are you serious, bro?” Then he was shot.
One of the women testified under direct examination that Beasley had a bemused look on his face, looked at her, then looked at Madumelu. When he looked at Madumelu, he was shot, the woman testified.
“As soon as he [Beasley] looked back at David, David shot him in the head,” the woman testified. “I never thought he would have shot him.”
Madumelu took Beasley’s wallet but then threw it away when they were on the way to a South Side club because it was empty, Yacovone said. Yacovone said Madumelu bragged about Beasley being his “first body” despite the fact he got no money from him.
The next day, one of the women got into an argument with the brothers and went to slash the tires on their car on Cohasset. Yacovone said Kitchen shot that woman, then the other woman, and his brother told him to keep shooting until she was dead. She survived.
That shooting was key to solving the Beasley case, Yacovone said. Police said later one of the women told detectives about Beasley’s death. That led to the investigation and indictments.
The shell casings from Beasley’s killing and the shooting on Cohasset not only match, they also match a .40-caliber handgun that was found on the brothers when they were arrested, Yacovone said.