Man found dead of gunshot after car crash on Tod Avenue in Warren

Staff report

WARREN

Though police say Khalef K. Freeman was found shot to death in a car that crashed into a house on Tod Avenue Southwest early Friday and his shooting took place at the corner of Sweetbrier Street at Ferndale Avenue Southwest, other details remain murky.

Freeman, 38, of Ferndale Avenue, was dead at the scene, but a second person in the car suffered serious injuries and was taken to a hospital in an ambulance after that person was removed from the car with a mechanical tool.

Police received a 12:46 a.m. 911 call alerting them to shots fired at Sweetbrier and Ferndale, but officers were diverted to a home at 721 Tod Ave. SW for a car that crashed into a house with lots of damage to the car and house. Officers found Freeman dead in the car, though police didn’t say where he was seated in the vehicle. The other person was a passenger, police said.

Police later found a bullet shell casing and other evidence identifying the Ferndale/Sweetbrier location as the crime scene. The other person in the car with Freeman also said the shooting happened on Sweetbrier.

Officials evacuated all the residents of the apartment house and had the gas turned off because of the damage and smoke from the crash. At least one resident was going to have to be relocated from the home because of the damage.

The home is at the location where Palmyra Road dead ends at a traffic light into Tod Avenue.

Freeman has a lengthy record of arrests, according to the Trumbull County jail, which says he was been booked 51 times dating back to 2006. He was bound over to a county grand jury in March on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

He was sentenced to two years in prison in 2011 after being convicted in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court of two drug charges.

If the shooting death turns out to be a homicide, it would be the seventh one this year in the city. By this time in 2018, there were four.