YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office is opposing the release on parole for Shawn Greene and Harold Agee, who were both convicted of murder.

Greene was convicted in the April 25, 1999, murder of Daniel Wilkerson. Greene was sentenced to 15 years to life and has served 19 1/2 years in prison. He was given credit for more than three years in jail awaiting trial.

Assistant Prosecutor Ralph M. Rivera filed an objection with the Ohio Parole Board. Greene has a parole hearing set this month.

Greene encountered Wilkerson at Shawndea Bell’s house; Greene was dating Bell at the time, and Wilkerson was Bell’s ex-boyfriend. After Wilkerson entered the residence, Greene immediately retrieved his revolver from the bedroom, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Greene and Wilkerson then exchanged words that resulted in Greene producing his revolver and shooting Wilkerson once in the stomach. After his arrest, Greene admitted to the Youngstown detectives that he shot Wilkerson, but Greene claimed self-defense.

The evidence, however, showed that Greene never saw Wilkerson with a firearm that day, and Wilkerson never indicated that he had a gun on his person that day. There also was not much of an argument before Greene shot Wilkerson; thus, the evidence demonstrated that Greene’s self-defense claim was nothing more than an attempt to evade responsibility for murdering Wilkerson, prosecutors stated.

For all those reasons, prosecutor’s office objected to the release of Greene because “the brash and senseless murder of Daniel Wilkerson demonstrates that there does not exist reasonable ground to believe that … paroling (Shawn Greene) would further the interests of justice and be consistent with the welfare and security of society.”

The prosecutor’s office also is opposing parole for Agee, 52, who was sentenced to 23 years to life for the aggravated murder of James Crafter Jr. on May 22, 1994, in Youngstown. Agee has been in prison for 26 years and gets credit for a little more than one year in jail awaiting trial.

Agee also is scheduled for a parole hearing this month.

On the date of the murder, Agee and an unknown person abducted Crafter at gunpoint. When they drove off, another acquaintance of Agee got out of his car and held everybody on the street at gunpoint to make sure that no one could leave to rescue or assist the victim, the prosecutor’s office stated in a news release.

Agee had Crafter drive them to Crafter’s house at 2216 Ash St. in Youngstown. As they began to walk down the basement stairway, Agee fired his weapon into the victim’s back and head, the release states. Youngstown police later found Crafter around the corner from the basement steps with 29 bullet holes in his body.

Agee shot Crafter at least 12 times, all from the back, execution-style, prosecutors stated. The prosecutor’s office objected to Agee’s release because of the “callous and heartless calculation that went into James Crafter Jr.’s execution-style murder,” the release states.

His conduct “demonstrates that there does not exist “reasonable ground to believe that … paroling (Harold Agee) would further the interests of justice and be consistent with the welfare and security of society,” the statement concludes.