Staff photo / Ed Runyan This is the home on West Delason Avenue in Youngstown where three men were found shot to death Dec. 12, 2019. No arrests have been made in the case.

YOUNGSTOWN — Despite Youngstown having a triple homicide late last year, the city recorded a relatively low number of 20 homicides for 2019.

The lowest homicide number in the last 42 years was in 1978, when the city had 18, said Capt. Brad Blackburn of the Youngstown Police Department detective bureau.

The record high was in 1995, when there were 68.

The 2019 homicide total of 20 is a reduction from the past two years, when there were 28 in both 2017 and 2018, but Blackburn said there is rarely any “rhyme or reason” for increases or decreases in the city’s homicide numbers.

He noted that if the city did not have such a professional trauma center at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital so close, “those numbers would definitely be higher. Thank God for St. E’s.”

Blackburn said detectives are still working the Dec. 12 triple homicide on West Delason Avenue that killed Korey Jennings, 38, Jamal Burley, 38, and Adrien Brown, 42. Blackburn said there is “nothing we can expand on at this point” as far as information to provide to the public about the case.

Police initially said robbery may have been the motive, but they do not know if anything was taken from the victims. No one has been arrested.

Police were called to the house about 11:15 p.m. after a person went there and found a body inside the doorway, Blackburn has said. Another body was in the living room and another in the kitchen. Two weapons were used in the shootings.

Bryan Phares, an investigator with the Mahoning County Coroner’s office, said the office is still awaiting test results before issuing an official ruling on the cause and manner of death of the three men. Police have treated the deaths as homicides since just after the bodies were discovered.

Youngstown has a lot of programs designed to combat violence in the city, such as Operation Steel Penguin, which took place in June and targeted people illegally possessing firearms, Blackburn said. It was a joint operation among the Youngstown Police Department, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Ohio Adult Parole Authority; US. Attorney’s Office; and Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office.

The operation resulted in scores of suspects being arrested, 33 firearms being seized, four people being indicted in federal court and others charged in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

The operation came about after Youngstown had 13 homicides in the last 2 1/2 months of 2018. U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio Justin Herdman called a meeting with federal law enforcement officials to see how it could help the city stem the violence, and Operation Steel Penguin was the result.