Staff photo / Ed Runyan Henry Wylie Jr., 72, testified Wednesday in the aggravated murder trial of Brian Donlow Jr. and Stephon Hopkins, who are accused of the June 2018 shooting death of his son, Brandon Wylie.

YOUNGSTOWN — The murder trial of Brian Donlow Jr. and Stephon Hopkins is “different” from most. “And that’s because there is a video,” assistant Mahoning County Prosecutor Mike Yacovone said Wednesday in opening statements to the jury.

He said jurors will see surveillance videos from the Plaza View apartments showing Hopkins “firing a handgun multiple times” in the location where Brandon Wylie, 31, was shot to death. The apartments are off of McGuffey Road on the East Side. Wylie’s death was June 18, 2018.

The video is expected to be part of the prosecution’s case in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court today, along with testimony from detectives. Testimony resumes at 9 a.m. Later today, it likely will be the defense’s turn to present witnesses.

“At 11:52 on the video, you will see our victim … walking into the Plaza View apartment complex,” Yacovone said. “He’s on foot. He walks up to a group of people hanging outside of Building L.” Hopkins, 23, and Donlow, 25, are among the group, and the three walk away together, Yacovone said.

“At a certain point, another camera captures Stephon Hopkins walking from the right of the screen to the left of the screen … shooting a firearm multiple times.” He added, “In the video you will see Brian Donlow trailing behind, walk up to the body. He has something in his hands,” Yacovone said.

“By 11:56 in the video, he is dead — four minutes,” Yacovone said of Wylie. The video does not show Wylie, only two men.

In their opening statement, defense attorneys said jurors will not know after watching the videos who killed Wylie.

“They want you to look at a grainy video. They want you to look at a blurred image and say, ‘That’s Stephon Hopkins.’ You’re not going to be able to do that,” said attorney Mark Carfolo, who represents Hopkins.

Attorney John P. Laczko, who represents Donlow, agreed. “That video does not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that” Donlow was involved in the killing, he said.

Two women who were there that night were among the first witnesses.

Crystal Mosley, 23, described “hanging out” at the apartment complex with two girlfriends and four males. She named three of the males, including Hopkins and described him as wearing a white shirt and having a “little afro.”

“Do you remember telling (police) about Brian Donlow as well?” assistant Prosecutor Dawn Cantalamessa asked her.

“I do not recall,” Mosley said.

“You don’t recall giving Lt. (Doug) Bobovnyik his name?

“No.”

Do you remember identifying him by a photograph?”

“Yes,” she said.

She said she knew Donlow and picked him out of a lineup of four men with names that were similar to Donlow’s. Bobovnyik showed her the lineup several days after the shooting, she said.

Bobovnyik testified at an earlier hearing in the case that Mosley identified Donlow as having been among the people hanging out that evening.

But in her testimony Wednesday, she only described there being another male there whose face she did not see.

When Laczko, Donlow’s attorney, cross examined her, she said Donlow was not there that night, and that she told Bobovnyik that.

“You did not see Brian Donlow that night?” Laczko asked.

“No,” she said.

Tashayla Tensley, 20, testified that she, Hopkins and Donlow were among the people hanging out together before the shooting. She and Mosley had left to get food at a nearby store at the time the shooting took place, she and Mosley testified.

Tensley said she did not know the names of Hopkins and Donlow the night of the shooting. “They were not my friends, so I did not know them by name until I saw it on the news,” she said.

Wylie’s father, Henry Wylie Jr., 72, of Youngstown testified that Brandon Wylie was his youngest son. He and Brandon both served in the military, Brandon serving in the Army for seven years. Brandon lived with him at the time of his death, and Brandon had been at home a short time before he was killed.

Brandon did not have a car, so he apparently walked the quarter mile from their home to the Plaza View apartments, he said.

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