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Gun seized in October links man to ’16 double shooting
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Raymon Autry certainly wouldn’t be the first defendant to be confused during arraignments in municipal court.
The 19-year-old said Wednesday during his arraignment via video hookup from the Mahoning County jail that he had no idea why he was facing eight charges in a December 2016 shooting that injured two people.
Police were able to link him to the crime, however, thanks to a gun they took from a car he was driving in October that matched up with evidence left behind in the shooting.
Autry, of Bryson Street, was given a bond of $700,000 by Judge Elizabeth Kobly on two charges of felonious assault, two counts of kidnapping and four counts of aggravated burglary a Dec. 3, 2016, burglary and shooting at a home on Elbertus Avenue in which a 27-year-old man was shot in the pelvis and a 22-year-old man was shot in the leg.
When he heard his bond, Autry muttered an obscenity that was clearly heard and left courtroom personnel gasping.
“I really don’t know nothing about these charges at all,” Autry said.
In October, Autry was arrested after police saw a car he was driving at Saranac and Kensington avenues blocking traffic. When officers stopped to question Autry, he told them he had no driver’s license.
When police searched the car before it was towed, they found a .45-caliber Beretta semiautomatic handgun inside.
The handgun was test-fired at the police department, and the bullets and shell casings were given to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to be submitted to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, or NIBIN, a database that has evidence from shootings across the country. Detectives were then informed early this month that the evidence from the car matched to evidence collected at the Elbertus shooting. Autry was arrested a few days later.
Earlier this year, police announced they were able to link ballistic evidence collected in 2017 to 52 different crimes through the NIBIN.
In the Elbertus shooting, when police arrived, they found the two shooting victims inside as well as a woman. The victims told them a man burst in holding a handgun and demanded to know where the money and drugs were. He then forced the woman and one of the victims to kneel while forcing the other victim at gunpoint to take him through the house.
When they got back to the living room, the gunman tried to take a video-game system. Reports said the two victims struggled with the gunman for the system when a second person, also armed, came inside and fired several shots, striking both men.
Another person who was in a separate apartment in the home told police he went outside to charge his cellphone in his car when the cellphone was taken at gunpoint by someone outside. The suspect then went inside and the man heard several gunshots a short time later, reports said.
Assistant City Prosecutor Jeffrey Moliterno told Judge Kobly that the victims were able to pick Autry out of a photo lineup after it was determined Autry was a suspect. Moliterno also said investigators believe the home was targeted because it was just after Black Friday, the annual big shopping day after Thanksgiving.