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Testimony begins in cop-shooting case
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
One of two city police officers who was shot at last January testified Thursday about how a man they tried to question ran away before firing at them on the South Side.
Patrolman Brandon Caraway testified before Judge Maureen Sweeney in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that Gerald Wainwright, 26, fired two shots at him and his partner, Patrolman Timothy Edwards, early Jan. 27, 2018, after they spotted him walking in the street, wearing a mask and carrying a backpack.
Edwards was driving and Caraway was calling out a foot chase on the radio when Wainwright turned around in the fenced-in lot at the former Hillman Street School at Princeton Avenue and Hillman Street. When the cruiser continued toward him, Carraway testified, Wainwright started running but he turned and fired as he ran.
Carraway tried to open the door to fire back and that’s when, in his own words, “all hell broke loose.”
“I heard boom, boom, boom, boom. Multiple shots,” Caraway said. “Glass was hitting my face.”
Caraway testified he later learned that Edwards was returning fire through the window of the cruiser at Wainwright.
Wainwright is charged with two counts of felonious assault on a police officer and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Edwards and Caraway were on patrol about 2:30 a.m. when they spotted Wainwright walking in the street. Wainwright was wounded in the throat after they returned fire and he spent several days in the hospital. An internal affairs investigation said the officers acted within departmental policy.
The city has an ordinance that people cannot walk in the street unless there is no passable sidewalk provided. The two officers also wanted to question Wainwright because it was strange for someone to be walking in a high-crime area with a mask and a backpack at 2:30 a.m., and they had probable cause to question him because Wainwright was in violation of the sidewalk ordinance, Caraway testified.
Wainwright’s attorney, Michael Kivlighan, told jurors in his opening statement that his client did fire a gun that morning, but he did not mean to harm the officers.
Instead, Kivlighan said he ran from police because he knew if he was stopped they would find the gun he had, which he did not have a permit for. He said Wainwright fired because he hoped it would make the police back off enough for him to get away.
“He thought if he fired, they would freeze,” Kivlighan said. “He thought if he fired that gun, they would stop.”
Kivlighan said jurors would have to decide if Wainwright had intent to injure the two officers.
Edwards could not testify in person because he is enrolled in Navy pilot training. He testified instead via video. Both Edwards and Caraway are U.S. Marine Corps veterans.