Man sentenced for Last Call shooting death

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A man convicted last month of a 2017 murder at a South Avenue bar was sentenced Thursday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to 21 years to life in prison.

Judge Anthony Donofrio handed down the sentence for Johnny Ray Wallace III, 24, of East Midlothian Boulevard, in the Nov. 28, 2017, shooting death of Colin Brown, 45.

Brown was killed in the bar’s bathroom. Prosecutors did not offer a motive, but said Wallace was the only person in the bathroom with Brown when he was shot and that witnesses saw Wallace run out of the bathroom.

Wallace was tried for Brown’s death in June 2018, but a judge declared a mistrial after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict. Prosecutors opted to retry him in Brown’s death.

Jurors found Wallace guilty June 28. Wallace was sentenced to 15 years to life for murder, the maximum sentence under Ohio law. He was also give a three-year sentence for a firearm specification and three years on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Those sentences run consecutively to the murder sentence.