Trending
YOUNGSTOWN -- As National Nonviolence Week in Youngstown began, police were investigating two shootings on Sunday.
The department released brief statements over the weekend addressing the incidents that left one person dead and one in critical condition.
A Youngstown police report states only that about 3 a.m. on Sunday, police responded to calls about gunfire, and found a 20-year-old man with multiple gunshot wounds lying on the ground next to a car in the 500 block of East Lucius Avenue on the city's South Side. The report and news release both state that the man was brought to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital, where he died of his wounds.
Police had no suspects as of Sunday.
On Sunday afternoon, the department sent out another news release about a shooting on Cooper Street, also on the South Side. The victim was a 20-year-old woman, who was taken to St. Elizabeth and was listed in critical condition.
The fatal shooting represents the city's eighth homicide of the year.
The last victim, Kelvin Crenshaw, also was 20 and shot to death on the South Side. Crenshaw was killed at the corner of Glenwood Avenue and Indianola Avenue on July 29. No one has yet been arrested or charged in that shooting.
On Friday, the man charged in the city's fourth homicide of the year was acquitted by a Mahoning County jury. Darius Smith, 23, of Youngstown, shot Ty'Ron Perry Jr., 16, of Akron, on May 27 at a house on East Dewey Avenue, but jurors accepted Smith's self-defense claim.
Another man, Kimani Johnson, 35, Youngstown's sixth homicide, was killed just over a month later, very close to the same East Dewey home. In that case, police arrested and charged Dayvon D. Alexander, 22, of Akron.
Sunday's shootings, rather ironically, came on the same day that hundreds of Mahoning Valley residents marched through Youngstown, dressed in purple and carrying signs decrying violence. The parade, sponsored by Mahoning County Sojourn to the Past, was the opening of Nonviolence Week in the city.
The event saw participation from members and leaders from multiple local organizations and agencies, including the entirety of the Mahoning County Prosecutor's Office.
At a rally downtown following the parade, Youngstown Mayor Derrick McDowell decried the latest homicide. Holding back tears at times, McDowell said that everyone needs to stand and lift their voices for the city and one another.
“Freedom belongs to this community,” he said, adding, “We are not our violence; we are victors.”