Vashuad May, 22, right, is seen during a hearing earlier in his aggravated murder case. He is set for trial today in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. His attorney, Aaron Meikle, is at left.

YOUNGSTOWN — Vashuad May, 22, who was indicted in January in the April 26, 2022, shooting death of Rawsheem Aponte, 24, is set for trial this morning before Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

The Aponte killing was described in detail by the woman who was in the car with him on Mohawk Avenue on the South Side during a preliminary hearing in Youngstown Municipal Court last December.

May is charged with aggravated murder, murder, three counts of attempted murder, three counts of felonious assault and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Most of the charges also contain firearm specifications. If convicted, May could get a life prison sentence but not the death penalty.

During a preliminary hearing in Youngstown Municipal Court, Aponte’s fiancee testified that people in multiple vehicles chased the vehicle she, Aponte and their two children were in for 30 minutes before Aponte drove down the dead-end Mohawk Avenue and was killed in a barrage of gunfire.

“It was multiple cars. Every time we turned, they kept coming out of nowhere. They kept chasing us, and chasing us and chasing us and shooting at us,” the woman said under questioning by Youngstown prosecutor Kathy Thompson.

Because of the dead end, Aponte backed up the car and pulled into the front yard of a house. That is when she said the gunman “shot Rasheem, not once, not twice, over and over again in front of me and my kids, over and over again.”

A Youngstown police detective testified at the hearing that police recovered nearly 100 bullets and spent bullet shell casings after the killing.

A surveillance video from the street showed the car Aponte was in and another car passing the house, “then moments later you can see the Camaro (of Aponte) backing down the street and crashing into the front yard.” He said the video shows “a gentleman dressed all in black following the car, chasing the car. And once it comes to rest, he is shooting into the car.

“And then once he looks in and sees, he runs over and gets into a white Malibu and drives off,” Anderson said.

Anderson said he could not tell who the shooter was, but the man was compared to some other video the police had pulled off of the internet and said, “It could be said it was Vashuad.”

He testified that there was no DNA or fingerprints in the case. The video showed that the shooter was left-handed, he said, adding the shooter had some cloth covering part of his face.

If the trial takes place as scheduled, it will be the first criminal jury trial Krichbaum has presided over since the November 2018 trial of David Kalna, now 44, who Krichbaum sentenced to the maximum of 30 years in prison for trafficking a 15-year-old child. Kalna was convicted of two counts of human trafficking.

Jennifer Bonish, assistant prosecutor, told the judge just prior to sentencing that the child was not a drug user or a runway. The child was “just an ordinary 15-year-old,” Bonish said, adding, “The defendant made (the child) a victim of human trafficking so he could sustain his own drug habit.”

Kalna’s expected release date / parole eligibility date is April 2048, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction website.