YOUNGSTOWN — Raymond B. Owens Jr. 32, could get about 20 years in prison when he is sentenced at 1:30 p.m. Nov. 10 for shooting a man standing on the porch of a South Jackson Street home June 10, 2020.

Judge John Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court found Owens guilty of four of the five charges he faced — two counts of discharging a firearm on near prohibited and one count each of felonious assault and improperly discharging a firearm at or into a habitation.

Durkin presided over the one-day trial Monday without a jury at the request of the defense. Durkin announced the verdict Tuesday at a hearing with the defendant and others present.

The victim was shot in the chest, causing serious injuries requiring several surgeries to repair internal injuries, prosecutors said. Owens, of Dogwood Lane, drove past the East Side house multiple times before firing at the victim, who was the fiance of the mother of Owens’ child.

The victim got a gun after seeing Owens drive past the house the first time and fired it after he was shot, but no one was injured by his shots. At the time the victim was hit, he and a woman were on the porch, but there had been children, ages 6 and 4 on the porch just prior to the gunfire, prosecutors said.

Each of the four convictions contain a three-year gun specification, which adds 12 years to Owens’ sentence. The judge did not find Owens guilty of any of several five-year drive-by-shooting specifications and found Owens not guilty of firing into another home on Jackson Street that day.

NOT SELF-DEFENSE

Durkin explained some of the reasons for his verdicts, including the reason he did not find that Owens acted in self-defense or defense of others. Owens claimed the victim fired at him first, while Owens’ children were in the car. But why wouldn’t Owens “speed off to protect himself and the kids,” the judge said.

Durkin said he found the testimony of the woman credible. “She said she saw Mr. Owens drive by, directly look at her and kept going. Testimony I believe is that (the victim) was so concerned that something might happen, he went and got the gun he kept at that house.”

After firing three or four shots, Owens did not call police but instead called his mother, who advised him to call a lawyer, the judge said.

The judge found that Owens did not fire a weapon in self-defense or the defense of another when he fired at the home, he said.