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Mom reflects on son who was killed
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
The mother of a 15-year-old boy who was killed last week while trying to sell phones to someone he contacted over the internet said he’d just learned he was going to be a father and was trying to raise money.
“More or less, he was trying to save up money,” said Billie Wright-Marinoff, the mother of Damon Marinoff of Farrell, Pa., who police said died Thursday after he was shot at a home in the 700 block of Sherwood Avenue.
Police said Marinoff and a 19-year-old friend who drove agreed to meet two people they talked to online at the Sherwood Avenue home because Marinoff had a pair of phones he wanted to sell.
Instead, the two men tried to rob Marinoff and his driver, and Marinoff was shot.
They drove to a church parking lot at Glenwood and Parkwood avenue where they called police. Officers later discovered the Sherwood Avenue home is vacant.
Marinoff died at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital.
Wright-Marinoff said her son also was going to turn 16 shortly and he was looking forward to getting his driver’s license and working. She said he wanted to be a good father to the child that is on the way.
Her son was a person who put others above himself, Wright-Marinoff said, sometimes through tears.
“Everybody loved him,” she said. “No matter where he went, he put a mark on someone.”
Marinoff’s death is the third homicide in Youngstown in 2018. Police are still trying to figure out if the shooting death early Sunday of a man on Hudson Avenue after a fight with a woman is a homicide as well.
In 2017, Youngstown had 26 homicides.
Detective Sgt. Ron Barber, the lead investigator on the case, said police are still trying to get more information on Marinoff’s death.
Anyone with information is asked to call the detective bureau at 330-742-8911.