Trending
YOUNGSTOWN -- An Austintown woman taking her dog out Nov. 22, 2021, said she saw a man she knew by appearance walking from Mahoning Avenue toward the apartment where he was staying, talking to a man in a car and then firing a gun at the car.
The man in the car, the victim of the felonious assault, was not injured. He was later identified as Trayshaun M. Hill, 22, of Westminster Avenue, who also was indicted in the events of Nov. 22, 2021.
Hill later pleaded guilty to having weapons while not allowed, tampering with evidence and receiving stolen property for having a stolen car and was sentenced in December 2022 to 18 months in prison.
Sharon Berry later identified Stevie A. Ballard, now 23, the man on trial before Judge Anthony Donofrio, in a photo lineup. Although the shooter on the night in question had something masking his face, Berry said she recognized Ballard, in part, from the way he walked, she testified Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
The trial resumes this morning.
Ballard is on trial on charges of felonious assault, discharging firearms on or near prohibited premises, having weapons while not allowed and carrying a concealed weapon.
Ballard, who was acquitted of aggravated murder during another Mahoning County trial in August, could get more than 10 years in prison if convicted on the current charges. Wednesday was the first day of testimony.
Berry said she had seen the man who fired the gun almost every day for a while because she had seen him coming and going with his girlfriend from the Westminster apartments across the street.
On Nov. 22, she saw him walk up to a white Jeep that was stopped in the street. "They started talking and the next thing, he had pulled a gun from the front of his pants, started shooting at the car, took off around the building, still shooting backwards at the car, I guess."
Berry said her dog started running for the house, and she did too. She went inside the house but continued to look outside. She said that when the shooting took place, she and her dog were only 10 to 15 yards away.
The shooter was wearing gray sweatpants and a black jacket with either a hood up to his face or a "full mask" covering his face.
When Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Marty Hume asked Berry if she had seen the male with the gun before, she said, "Oh yea. Yes, I knew who it was when I saw him walking down through there," she said. She did not know his name.
"I sit on the porch so my dog can go to the bathroom or I smoke outside," she said. "He would come out with his girlfriend, who had a baby, and they would come out to get in the car."
She started to pay more attention to him after one day she saw the couple come out to get in the car, and Ballard "had her open the trunk, and he went around and took his gun out and put it in the trunk."
About two hours later, she was on the porch, and they returned. "He had her open the trunk. He went around and got it and put it back in his pants," she said.
She said after the gunfire Nov. 22, 2021, the Jeep pulled away.
Hume asked her if she could identify the man who fired the shots that day, and she identified Ballard at the defense table.
She said she spoke to detectives the day of the incident and looked at a photo lineup. She was unable to identify anyone in the first lineup but did identify Ballard in the second lineup. When asked how sure she was that the person in the photo was the person who fired the gun, she said "100%."
Under questioning, she described a small tan-colored small car that Ballard and his girlfriend drove. The prosecutors showed her the body camera video of an Austintown officer who arrested Ballard the next day in connection with the shooting.
It showed a tan-colored car parked near Ballard, and she identified it as the car Ballard's girlfriend drove and parked at the apartment complex in a spot where Berry could see it from her home.
"Almost every day I was out there, they would go in and out," she said when asked how often she saw the couple and their vehicle. Ballard appeared to be wearing similar clothing in the body camera video as the clothing she remembered the shooter having on, she said.
Under cross examination by Nick Cerni, one of Ballard's attorneys, Berry said one of the things that made her sure the man she saw walking up the street that day, who committed the shooting, was her neighbor was "the way he walks."
She later agreed that she could only see the shooter from the waist up because he was on the opposite side of the car when he fired at the car. But she clarified that she could still see enough to know he pulled the gun out from the waist of his pants, "where he carries it," she said.
She testified that the gunshots could have hit houses on her side of the street because of the direction they were fired. Her fiance's grandchildren were in one of those houses next door to hers.
During opening statements, Hume said the Jeep was found to have bullet holes in the hood, front fender, windshield area and the roof. The owner of the vehicle testified that the Jeep was stolen from her home in Youngstown. She said she left the keys in it by accident. She said the Jeep had no bullet holes in it when it was taken.
The Jeep was found on Four Mile Run Road in Austintown, and Hill was found nearby. A firearm was found near Hill.
In opening statements on behalf of Ballard, defense attorney Rhys Cartwright-Jones told jurors that all of the evidence points to Hill as being the criminal because Hill "had a gun, was found with a gun and was clearly identified as doing something violent that day by means of a firearm.”