Friday, August 30, 2019
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A Mahoning County grand jury has indicted a suspect in the death of a man on Willow Street in March.
Leonard Carter, 30, of Stewart Avenue, was indicted Thursday on a charge of aggravated murder and murder in the death of Marqueese Shine, 27, inside a vacant 771 Willow St. home.
Carter was already facing two counts of attempted murder for attacks on two other men in March.
After one of those attacks on March 27, the victim called police and told them he had been attacked in the East Side home.
When officers went inside the home, they found Shine’s body in a second-floor bedroom. He had been dead about a week before he was found.
There was evidence Shine had been cut with a machete, which was used on the other victims, police said.
Detective Sgt. Michael Cox, lead investigator, said he took the case to the grand jury after tests by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation found Carter’s DNA on the victim.
Carter was indicted in May in the other two attacks.
He has been in the Mahoning County jail since his indictment.
The house where Shine was found burned down several weeks later.
The county coroner’s office ruled Shine’s death a homicide due to blunt force trauma and “sharp force trauma” to the head.
The indictment with the murder counts was a superseding one, as Carter was also indicted on two counts of attempted murder and two counts of felonious assault for the two previous attacks.
New charges also include a count of rape and kidnapping.