Staff photo / Ed Runyan Attorney Walter Madison is seen at the end of Thursday’s preliminary hearing in Youngstown Municipal Court embracing Shanay T. Jacobs, whose murder case was bound over to a county grand jury at the end of the hearing.

YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown Municipal Court Judge Renee DiSalvo found probable cause that a murder was committed and that Shanay T. Jacobs, 32, may have committed it at the end of a two-hour preliminary hearing Thursday. She bound the case over to a county grand jury.

Testimony from two Youngstown police detectives revealed that surveillance videos from two homes and Jacobs’ own statements were the reasons Jacobs was charged with the Oct. 15 murder of Nathaniel Watson, 30.

He was found fatally wounded under a car in the front yard of a home on South Schenley Avenue on the West Side.

Detective Jerry Fulmer, the lead detective, said surveillance video from the home of Jacobs’ sister on South Schenley showed that just prior to Watson being run over, Watson walked out of the house in front of Jacobs.

Jacobs came “out of the home screaming and calling him insults and chasing after him,” Fulmer said. He later agreed that “chasing” may not have been the correct term. Instead, Jacobs followed Watson, he said.

Under questioning by Kathy Thompson, Youngstown prosecutor, Detective Chad Zubal played 10 short video clips, one of which showed the incident Fulmer described.

Fulmer said he interviewed Jacobs at the scene, and she said that after Watson left her sister’s home, he walked along the sidewalk on Schenley and she drove a car.

“Initially she said he jumped in front of the car,” Fulmer testified. “But then after speaking with her further, she … did admit that she ran him over on the sidewalk.”

Fulmer said another reason Jacobs was charged with murder was that during the investigation, the detectives also acquired a surveillance video from another South Schenley home that appears to capture Jacobs walking from where Watson was killed back toward Jacobs’ sister’s house.

But it also showed the headlights from a car about the time of the incident. Fulmer said Jacobs was driving the vehicle, and it illuminated homes on the other side of the street from the camera. The movement of the headlights indicates that Jacobs veered off the road to hit Watson.

Fulmer said the video shows the headlights facing northbound on South Schenley at 5:08:14 a.m. on the video. At 5:08:17 “you see the headlights then veer to the right … which would suggest that the vehicle was turned in a different direction.” At 5:08:21, Watson was struck by the vehicle, Fulmer said.

No video shows Watson being struck, but the video showing the headlights “means that the car was going straight, turned and then went off road and ran over Nathaniel Watson,” Fulmer testified.

The short surveillance videos from Jacobs’ sister’s house showed Jacobs, Watson, Jacobs’ sister and a young boy all walking in and out of the front door of the home of Jacobs’ sister on South Schenley.

The video showing the young boy showed him with a cell phone in his hand. He made the 911 call that brought police to the scene, according to testimony. Police said they were called to South Schenley initially because of a fight. The first Youngstown officer to arrive at the scene, patrolman Nate Gibson, did not initially realize someone had been struck by a vehicle, according to his testimony.

He said he stopped close to where the vehicle was located in the yard near the sidewalk. Jacobs was standing nearby. “I stopped and exited my cruiser and asked her what was going on, why was her car up on the yard,” he said.

“She said that — I’m paraphrasing — her ex-boyfriend had jumped in front of the car,” Gibson said. “I looked around and I didn’t see anybody else in the vicinity, so I asked further where he’s at now. She said he was under the car.”

He ordered Jacobs to move away and walked around to the passenger side of the car. He said the passenger side of the car was closer to the houses than the street. He saw Watson under the car. He said he called to the man, but he did not respond.

Gibson testified that Jacobs spoke to him about the incident, which was recorded on his body camera. He read from a report he compiled that quoted her comments: “We were dropping my sister’s car off after a night of going out and me and my sister got into an argument,” he quoted her as saying.

“That’s it. So I started to get in the car and leave. My ex-boyfriend jumped … in front of the car and made me literally run him over just so I wouldn’t leave.”

Gibson said firefighters removed Watson from under the car.

Walter Madison, Jacobs’ attorney, raised questions about why detectives did not try to locate all of the bars Jacobs went to that night, find out how much she drank and why she was not tested for alcohol intoxication.

Later, Thompson asked Fulmer if Jacobs appeared to be impaired, and Fulmer said she did not, nor did he smell alcohol coming from her while she was in the police interview room.

Madison asked Fulmer whether Jacobs driving off of the road could have been a “function of impairment,” and Fulmer agreed it could have been. Madison asked to see the video of Fulmer’s interview with Jacobs at the police station, but that video was not available.

erunyan@vindy.com