Friday, August 17, 2018
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Police Chief Robin Lees said it was good police work and cooperation among law-enforcement agencies that led to the arrests Wednesday of three home-invasion suspects.
Lees said some of that good police work was across the Rocky Mountains, as two of the three suspects were taken into custody in Denver.
Brittany Thomas, 29, was taken into custody Wednesday in Youngstown by U.S. marshals. Also on Wednesday another suspect, Odis Simmons, 34, was arrested in a Denver hospital and Latrell Jackson, 36, was arrested by police in Denver after a traffic stop.
Thomas is in the Mahoning County jail.
Simmons and Jackson will be returned to Ohio once extradition hearings take place.
The three are wanted in a July 31 home invasion on Beechwood Place and face charges of aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary.
Chief of Detectives Capt. Brad Blackburn said officers in Denver pulled over a car Jackson was in and used a fingerprint scanner to check his fingerprints. That’s when they found out he was wanted on a warrant.
U.S. marshals here got a tip that Simmons was in a hospital and authorities in Denver acted on that tip and found Simmons and arrested him.
Thomas was arrested about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at Breaden and Overland avenues after marshals went to a nearby home to look for her. She was not there, but a city police officer said Thomas was seen leaving the house on foot, and marshals searched the area and arrested her when they found her.
Lees credited Denver police for “good police work” in the arrest of Jackson and the marshals and their tip line for their arrest of Simmons in the hospital and for tracking down Thomas. He said it shows the value of various law-enforcement agencies cooperating with one another.
Jackson and Simmons each served 13 years in prison after they pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court in the July 27, 2003, death of 17-year-old William Lee.
Police said Lee, Simmons, Jackson and another person were robbing a couple and were in a car with the male victim when he grabbed a gun, and Lee was shot in the stomach.