Police investigate stabbing death in Shenango Township

By Jeanne Starmack

The young man appeared to have been stabbed during a fight.

NEW CASTLE, Pa. — A 19-year-old city man found stabbed to death in Shenango Township “would do anything for you,” said one of his close friends.

Pennsylvania State and township police are investigating the death of Thomas Nail of Moravia Street.

Police found Nail dead on the ground with a stab wound to the neck at 4 a.m. Wednesday in a wooded area near Big Run Creek Road and Bryson Hill Road in the township, authorities said.

State police and Lawrence County District Attorney John Bongivengo conducted numerous interviews Wednesday at the state police barracks in New Castle, saying only that they were continuing to investigate what appeared to be a fight between teenagers or young adults.

State police said they went to the scene in response to a 911 call about the fight.

They would not say how many people were being interviewed. Bongivengo could not say how many people were present when Nail was killed.

Bongivengo said there were no formal suspects, only “persons of interest” at that point.

Nail was taken to Beaver Medical Center for an autopsy, state police said.

James Mahoney, 20, of Taylor Street here, and John Ayersman, 18, of Hillsville, waited at the state police barracks for interviews to be over. They are friends of Nail’s, with Mahoney describing them and others in a close-knit group as a “band of brothers.”

Neither had been at the scene when Nail was killed, and they were not being interviewed.

Ayersman said they were waiting for his two brothers, who were being interviewed because they had been in contact with Nail on Tuesday night through text messages.

He said he had seen Nail around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Shenango Plaza. “He wanted to hang out,” Ayersman said.

But Ayersman went home and didn’t get a ride back to the plaza.

“Then he ended up dying,” Ayersman said.

Mahoney said he received the bad news in a phone call at 5:30 a.m.

The two of them had grown up together in Shenango Township, graduating a year apart from Shenango High School. Nail graduated in 2008, he said.

“He was a great friend,” Mahoney said. “The best friend you could have. He’d do anything for you.”

He said he last saw Nail about a week ago.

“He was pretty much family,” Mahoney said. “We all stick together and call each other ‘brothers.’”

starmack@vindy.com