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Man pleads in apartment gunfire case

Prosecutors recommends 7-9 years in multiple-site June shooting incident

YOUNGSTOWN — Roderick Weaver, 28, of McBride Street, pleaded guilty to felonious assault and a gun specifiction this week in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court related to gunfire June 2 at the Victory Estates apartment complex.

A city man, 30, was the victim of the felonious assault, though he was not hit by the gunfire.

Youngstown police said a woman told police she heard gunfire and found a bullet hole under her steps in the 600 block of the Victory Estates apartments on the East Side. No one was injured.

While officers were talking to the woman, another woman flagged them down and said her car was hit twice by bullets. She said she was parked in the 900 block of Plazaview Court when unknown men started shooting at each other and running off in unknown directions. A Youngstown police report did not indicate whether any of the men were injured. The location of the second gunfire was not far from the location of the first gunfire.

Officers saw one bullet hole in the driver-side door and one bullet hole in the driver and passenger-side door frame.

The woman was not injured. Officers observed nine bullet shell casings in the parking lot in the area where the woman described the gunfire.

Following an investigation by Youngstown police, an arrest warrant was issued for Weaver for one count of felonious assault and one count of disharging firearms into a habitation.

On June 11, police asked for assistance from the Northern Ohio Violent Fugitives Task Force in finding and arresting Weaver. Police located and arrested him June 12 at an apartment in the 600 block of McBride Street.

Mahoning County prosecutors and the defense in Weaver’s case agreed upon a sentence of seven to nine years in prison. Judge R. Scott Krichbaum will sentence him at 9 a.m. Dec. 14.

The judge can accept the recommendation or choose his own sentence. Weaver remains free on bond.

Weaver’s indictment alleges that he pleaded guilty in February 2016 to burglary. Because of that conviction, he was also indicted in the new case on a specification of prior conviction and a specification that he was a repeat violent offender.

He was sentenced to three years in prison in February 2016 in that case.

Both specifications and additional charges of improperly discharging a firearm at or into a habitation, tampering with evidence and carrying a concealed weapon will be dismissed as part of his plea agreement.

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