YOUNGSTOWN — Marquise J. Hornbuckle, 25, of West Evergreen Avenue, pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to charges accusing him of shooting at two undercover Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers.

He was indicted last month on two counts of felonious assault and single counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm and discharging a firearm. The gunfire did not strike the troopers.

Hornbuckle was booked into the Mahoning County jail on Thursday and is being held in lieu of $200,000 bond.

The felonious assault charges each carry specifications that could add as much as seven years to his sentence if convicted.

The incident took place at West Warren Avenue and Summer Street on the South Side about 2 p.m. Nov. 8, 2019, while the troopers were investigating the theft of two vehicles.

The officers were inside an unmarked law enforcement vehicle, assigned to the Warren District Vehicle Theft and Fraud Unit. They were working in conjunction with the Youngstown Police Department.

They noticed a white Chevrolet Tahoe with no front license plate being driven in the area of West Evergreen Avenue, then parked at an address on West Evergreen, according to court documents.

The troopers later saw a dark-colored Tahoe owned by the rental company Hertz.

Officers then saw those two Tahoes and a third one traveling fast together on Hillman Street. The vehicles eventually split up.

Two of the Tahoes later returned to the West Evergreen area, and their drivers pulled into the Warren and Summer intersection and blocked it.

The windows went down on one of the Tahoes, and guns were fired toward the troopers, who returned fire and backed up to avoid the gunfire, the document states.

The troopers traveled on West Evergreen, where one of the Tahoes chased the troopers until the troopers activated their emergency lights and stopped in the road to return fire. The Tahoe left the area.

The Tahoe from where the shooting came was later found abandoned at a house on Bonnie Brae Avenue, where police accessed information from a Ring door bell that showed two people entering the house — one of whom was Hornbuckle, the document states.

Another of the Tahoes was later found at a motel in Orange, Ohio, where Hornbuckle was located. The document does not say whether he was taken into custody at the time. But as of Nov. 15, Hornbuckle could not be located.

Judge Anthony Donofrio was asked for permission to collect DNA from Hornbuckle to compare his DNA with evidence taken from the Tahoes.