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Man indicted in death of woman found in trash can
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
The woman who was found in a trash can on the East Side last month had been dead since the day in October she was released from the Mahoning County jail.
A Mahoning County grand jury indicted the man police say put her there, DeHaven L. Scurry, 50, of Summer Street, on a felony charge of tampering with evidence and a felony charge of abuse of a corpse.
Scurry was not in custody as of late Friday afternoon.
Assistant Prosecutor Michael Yacavone said Detective Sgt. Rick Spotleson had some good leads and had witnesses who had seen Scurry with the woman, Amy Begeot, 33, of Boardman.
Spotleson said Friday that Begeot died the same day she was last seen, Oct. 24, when she was released from the jail. Her body was found Jan. 10 in a trash can in a ravine behind a home on Haseltine Avenue on the East Side.
An official cause of death has not yet been determined by the coroner’s office, but foul play is not suspected, Yacovone said. Investigators think Begeot died of a heroin overdose.
Spotleson investigated the case when Begeot was first reported missing, and Scurry was a person of interest because family members of Begeot’s said he was often with her.
“I always suspected he had something to do with it,” Spotleson said.
Although it was a landlord who discovered Begeot in the trash can after he was cleaning out a house that Scurry was living in, Spotleson said the home was really a place for users to get together and do heroin.
Spotleson interviewed Scurry after Begeot was found, and he eventually confessed, with a twist: “He finally broke down, but then he blamed someone else,” Spotleson said.
Scurry has pending drug and weapons charges in common pleas court and is free on bond from a May traffic stop where police found pills and a 9 mm handgun. At the time, he was quoted in a police report as saying he had a gun because: “This is Youngstown, Ohio, and people get robbed and shot all the time. Rather be caught with it than without it.”