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Man charged with fatal shooting outside Niles bar set for September trial
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Ryan M. Daniels Sr., 29, is scheduled for a Sept. 3 trial in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court in the shooting death of a woman leaving the Hideaway Lounge in Niles.
Daniels, of Hunter Street Northwest, is charged with reckless homicide, involuntary manslaughter and possessing firearms in liquor-permit premises in the death of Britney A. Mazanec, 33, on Feb. 24.
During a hearing Thursday, Judge Ronald Rice set another pretrial hearing for Aug. 15. Daniels is free on bond.
A Niles police detective testified in Niles Municipal Court that Daniels appears to have shot Mazanec accidentally while slapping Mazanec’s car with his hand while holding a handgun.
Daniels said he slapped the passenger window with his hand twice to get Mazanec’s attention as she was driving away from the tavern. The second time he hit the window, the gun went off.
He said Mazanec had “brushed” him with her car as he “leaned over to help” after seeing an unknown black female and two white females arguing. The two white females were apparently Mazanec and her friend.
When Daniels’ gun went off, a bullet traveled through Mazanec’s arm and into her chest. Mazanec’s friend apparently didn’t realize Mazanec had been shot, only telling a 911 operator at the time that Mazanec had fallen unconscious after a male “smashed out” the car’s window.
In another case before Judge Rice on Thursday, Billy R. Morrow Jr., 49, is set for trial June 17 on allegations that he broke into a house on Hall Street Northwest at 1 a.m. Nov. 20 and refused to stop when the homeowner pointed a gun at him and yelled for him to “get out of here.”
The homeowner shot Morrow once in the upper arm. After that, Morrow stopped advancing and was arrested by police a short time later.
Morrow’s indictment also accuses him of two other burglaries – Nov. 18 on North Park Avenue and Nov. 16 on Adams Street Northwest.
Judge Rice refused a defense motion for Morrow to get a second evaluation to determine whether he was sane at the time of the burglary.
Morrow’s attorney, John Falgiani of the Ohio Public Defender’s Office, said in a filing last month that it was his “nonmedical opinion” that the first evaluation “ignores [Morrow’s] long history of severe mental illness and involuntary commitments.”
If convicted, Morrow could get about 20 years in prison.