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Youngstown's 2nd domestic-related homicide in week
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A woman taken to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital on Thursday was pronounced dead from a traumatic brain injury and is the city’s second domestic-related homicide in less than a week.
Ryan Weaver-Hymes was pronounced dead late Friday afternoon, investigators confirm. Her death is the third homicide in the city this year and second within a week.
All three homicide victims in this year are women.
In 2018, the city recorded 26 homicides. In those cases, three of the victims were women.
The husband of Weaver-Hymes, Jason Hymes, 46, was arrested Thursday on a charge of felonious assault after police were called to the hospital for a woman who had suffered a severe head injury.
Hymes was arrested after detectives interviewed him and other witnesses. He was arraigned Friday before Judge Carla Baldwin on the felonious-assault charge, which took place before his wife was pronounced dead. Judge Baldwin set his bond at $100,000. That charge is almost certainly expected to be upgraded next week.
Assistant City Prosecutor Cathy Thompson told Judge Baldwin that Hymes punched his wife in the head in the parking lot of a Logan Avenue bar on the North Side early Thursday, then slammed her head against the frame of his truck several times.
A police report said a witness told police when Hymes and his wife got to their home early Thursday after returning from the bar, Hymes beat his wife again.
Hymes told police his wife fell, reports said.
Thompson said Hymes has several past arrests and convictions, including a 2016 conviction for domestic violence. Records from Mahoning County Common Pleas Court show Hymes was sentenced in 2017 to five years’ probation with the first six months to be spent in the county jail after he pleaded guilty to a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Thursday’s arrest would violate that probation.
Earlier this week, Danekua Bankston, 28, died after being shot Feb. 8 in an apartment on the West Side. Her ex-boyfriend, Kyle Rice, 29, was arraigned Friday on a charge of aggravated murder. His bond was set at $1 million.
On Jan. 24, Crystal Hernandez, 24, was shot and killed in her McBride Street apartment on the East Side. Police said that shooting was by a group of men looking for her boyfriend. Six people are charged with her murder, including her boyfriend, and another on related charges.