Homicides in Youngstown declined in 2024
But five killings in June left many residents reeling
Homicide victims
in city in 2024
Homicide victims, ages and dates in Youngstown in 2024:
1. Jan. 22, Allen May, 23
2. Feb. 4, Dominique Callier, 32
3. Feb 4, Deandre M. Clyburn, 18
4. Feb. 13, Tyrone Chatman, 26
5. Feb. 29, Deanna Summers, 29
6. March 20, J. Allen Underwood, 17
7. May 4, Tyrell Hodge, 26
8. May 11, De’Miyah Simmons, 3
9. May 29, Raymond R. Queener,
33
10. June 3, Kenneth Stoffer, 39
11. June 9, Te’Nya J. McKinley, 18
12. June 11, Zariyan Dothard, 19
13. June 12, William L. Miller, 49
14. June 18, Angel L. Sostre, 22
15. July 11, Jermaine A. Tillis, 51
16. Aug. 19, Sean L. Dozier, 34,
17. Aug. 20, Christian Moretti, 20
18. Oct. 17, George Grays, 62
19. Oct. 17, Reynaldo Hernandez,
24
20. Nov. 8, Antwan Davenport, 37
Source: Youngstown Police Department
YOUNGSTOWN — Twenty people lost their lives in Youngstown last year as a result of a homicide, two fewer than in 2023. But there were moments during June when it seemed as if the killings would never end.
It began on a Sunday night, June 9, when 18-year-old Te’Nya McKinley was shot to death in a car in a parking lot off of Glenwood Avenue on the South Side near Glenwood Community Park.
Police found about 100 bullet shell casings and believe 131 shots were fired when gunfire erupted among people in cars who flooded the area after 11 p.m. to participate in automobile-driving antics referred to as a “car meet.”
McKinley, a 2023 Chaney graduate, was a freshman at Thiel College who wanted to be a neurosurgeon. She was “extremely intelligent, an excellent student, a young lady who was goal-oriented and purpose-driven,” the Rev. Kenneth Simon said at her funeral.
Two days later, late June 11, Zariyan Dothard, 19, was shot to death in the 500 block of East Judson Avenue, 2 miles to the east of where McKinley was slain. The family of Lyndale Wilkins Jr., then 17, turned Wilkins into police at just after 10 p.m., virtually the same time officers were responding to East Judson Avenue for the gunfire. Wilkins’ murder charge was later transferred to adult court and a grand jury will consider indictments against him.
The next night, at 10:26 p.m. June 12, Youngstown police found a man well known for his efforts to help young people avoid violence and death, William L. “Shimmie” Miller, 49, shot to death in a car on Steel Street near Salt Springs Road on the West Side.
His many community engagement projects included “Barbers & BBQ,” providing free haircuts to kids, the RESPECT basketball league through the YMCA, helping to provide job opportunities through “From Beefin to Brotherhood” and extending his efforts to the PROS & CONS podcast and Building Freedom Ohio, an organization dedicated to removing barriers for citizens returning from prison like he was in 2019.
Several hours after Miller was killed, early June 13, officers responded to a home on South Maryland Avenue on the West Side for a 12:42 a.m. disturbance call. The officer no sooner got inside the front door and gunshots were fired in the direction of the officer causing the officer to fire back.
When the firing stopped, Mathue A. O’Malley, 27, lay dying on the floor in the area where the shots were fired. Police believed the officer’s shots had killed O’Malley, but an autopsy report later concluded that O’Malley shot himself during the confrontation, and his death was ruled a suicide, not a homicide.
Five days later, on June 18, Angel L. Sostre, 22, was shot and killed near an apartment building on McBride Street on the East Side. Samuel X. Perez, 23, was charged with Sostre’s murder about three weeks after it happened.
Adding the early June 3 shooting death of Kenneth Stoffer, 39, in the 1400 block of Republic Avenue on the East Side, but not counting O’Malley, Youngstown had recorded five homicides in June.
When the year ended, it appeared that there had been 19 homicides in the city. But there were 20 because the Youngstown Police Department did not notify the public of the May 11 death of 3-year-old De’Miyah Altamese Simmons until the year was over, partly because it was unclear what caused her death at the time she was found unresponsive.
Capt. Jason Simon, head of the detective division of the Youngstown Police Department, said it was investigated as a possible homicide, but it was not certain whether it was a homicide until autopsy results were provided by the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The girl came to Youngstown from Florida to be cared for by relatives in early 2024, Capt. Simon said. On May 11, officers were called to a South Side home because the girl had gone unresponsive. She later died.
NOT COUNTED
The 20 homicides do not count the O’Malley suicide; another officer-involved case, the death of Shane Linderman, 50, Sept. 10 at the Dollar General on Belmont Avenue; or the death Linderman is accused of causing of a woman at the store.
A Youngstown police officer shot and killed Linderman when officers responded to the store for a man who had stabbed himself and a woman inside the store. An unnamed officer shot Linderman during the confrontation.
The deaths of Linderman and the woman, who has not been identified, are still under investigation by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, not by the Youngstown Police Department.
CHARGES
Six of the 20 homicides have resulted in criminal charges so far — Jules Freeman was charged in the Jan. 22, shooting death of Allen P. May, 23, on Evergreen Avenue on the South Side in the city’s first homicide of the year; Lamarie K. Smith being charged and later convicted in the Feb. 29 killing of DeeAnna Summers, 29, of West Virginia in the fifth homicide of the year; Wilkins being charged in the Dothard killing, homicide No. 12 for the year; Perez being charged in the death of Sostre in the 14th homicide of the year; David Tribble, 44, being charged in the July 11 shooting death of Jermaine Tillis, 51, on Judson Avenue on the South Side in the 15th homicide of the year; and charges against six men accused of being directly or indirectly involved in the Oct. 18 shooting death of Reynaldo Hernandez, 24, at a home on Bott Street on the East Side, the 19th homicide of the year.
Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court sentenced Smith in July to 19 to 24.5 years in prison after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter and felonious assault in Summers’ death.
Youngstown police said they were called to Smith’s home on Victor Avenue on the East Side Feb. 29 and that Smith said he was in a fight with Summers and she was not breathing. She died later at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital. Summers, who was from Charleston, W.Va., was a mother of two.
Capt. Simon said there are about six more cases that are “solved by exceptional circumstances,” meaning police know who committed the homicide but are “not able to charge at this time.” Sometimes it means the suspect died or “there just is not enough evidence at this time,” he said.
Having charges filed in more than half of last year’s 20 homicide cases or “solved by exceptional circumstances” is “good as far as I’m concerned, not perfect, but it still shows the work is getting fruition,” he said.
“It’s just we need something more,” he said of solving those cases. “Oftentimes, that is where we are requiring information from the community because we have reached the end of our evidentiary proof. We need to be able to prove it in court.”
He said the solve rate of murder cases in urban areas in cities like Chicago, New York or Miami is 24%, and Youngstown is “certainly in an urban environment, and we are about 60% solve rate, whether it’s by arrest or by exceptional circumstances. And I think it shows the hard work of the detective division and everyone else who assists in the investigations.”
He noted that the McKinley case is unsolved seven months after it happened, but the police department got evidence back last week in that case “that we are going to be exploring and looking at. So sometimes it takes time to come in.”