Staff file photo / Ed Runyan Andre K. Bailey was handcuffed March 3 after he learned that a jury found him guilty of aggravated murder and other crimes in the Oct. 17, 2024, shooting death of Reynaldo Hernandez, 24, at Bailey’s East Side home.

YOUNGSTOWN — It was clear from the first witness in the Andre K. Bailey aggravated murder trial in February — an Amazon driver making a delivery — that the Oct. 17, 2024, murder of Reynaldo Hernandez, 24, at Bailey’s East Side home on Bott Street unfolded in a bizarre way.

A recent filing by Mahoning County prosecutors in Bailey’s appeal of his convictions and sentence only confirms that the moment that Hernandez was shot and the aftermath of the shooting were stranger than fiction. The appeal is before the 7th District Court of Appeals.

The fatal shots fired at Hernandez apparently happened just minutes after Hernandez drove up to the house, parked in the back of the driveway and entered the home through the back door. The Amazon driver was apparently just outside the front door.

“Within minutes of entering (Bailey’s) home, Mr. Hernandez was shot purportedly in the kitchen area,” the filing by Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Kristie Weibling states.

“After he was shot, Mr. Hernandez ran from the kitchen into the living room, where blood could be seen seeping through his shirt,” the filing states. Bailey “appeared, pointing a pistol with an extended magazine at Mr. Hernandez,” it states.

SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS

The house had 11 surveillance cameras running, and there were at least a half dozen people inside the home, including Bailey, 41, some of whom were only convicted later of helping clean up the house in the short time available after the shooting before Youngstown police arrived.

Next, “Hernandez circled the living room area, reentered the kitchen and exited (Bailey’s) home through the back door. Due to the seriousness of his injuries, Mr. Hernandez collapsed in (Bailey’s) driveway, where he struggled for his life,” the prosecution filing states.

Meanwhile, the gray SUV that brought Hernandez to the home “rushed out of the driveway and hit” the Amazon delivery van parked on Bott Street near Bailey’s driveway “before fleeing the scene,” the filing states. The Amazon driver was in his vehicle at the time.

The gray SUV arrived at the house at nearly the same time as the Amazon driver, the Amazon driver testified. Apparently a second person was in the gray SUV when Hernandez pulled up, but it’s unclear who that was.

The Amazon driver was the first witness in the trial, testifying that he took a package to Bailey’s front door, put the package on the porch, took a photo of it, and then “I heard shots ring out. I heard shots. I heard a small, like scream, and that is when I returned to my vehicle,” he testified. He said he could tell the shots and scream were coming from inside the house.

“I returned back to my van. Before I could even get it into drive, that’s when a vehicle pulled out of the driveway and actually backed into me. It looked like they were fleeing the scene as well,” he said. “I took off to a safe location,” where he called 911 to report what happened. He called his company dispatcher first. They notified him to drive to a local Youngstown fire station to call 911.

He told a 911 dispatcher the car was a silver or gray SUV. He thought the driver was a female.

It’s not clear whether the Amazon driver had even left Bott Street at the point where Hernandez collapsed onto the driveway. Hernandez would lay there for about 10 minutes before some of the men from the home picked him up, put him into a car and drove away. His body would be found the next day in the Mount Hope Veterans Memorial Cemetery cemetery not far away.

THE CLEAN-UP

Assistant Prosecutor John Juhasz said during closing arguments in Bailey’s trial that someone finished cleaning up the blood at Bailey’s house 90 seconds before the first police officers arrived. When officers arrived, Hernandez’s body was gone and so were at least two people and two cars that had been there earlier.

Two people who left are Vincent D. Marbley, 60, and Eddie L. Winphrie, 41, both of Youngstown, who were indicted on the same charges as Bailey but who have never been located, according to authorities.

Bailey was still at the home when officers arrived. Juhasz said in his closing argument in the trial the reason Bailey was still there is because he was wearing an electronically monitored ankle bracelet as a result of a criminal case in another county.

Bailey was convicted at trial March 3 of aggravated murder with prior calculation and design; aggravated murder; felony murder; murder; aggravated robbery; tampering with evidence; and having weapons while under disability in the Hernandez murder.

Judge W. Wyatt McKay, a retired longtime Trumbull County Common Pleas Court judge handling the case on behalf of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge R. Scott Krichbaum, sentenced Bailey to 39 years to life in prison.

Prosecutors acknowledged that Bailey was most likely not the actual shooter. Prosecutors also noted that under Ohio law, the principal offender and a complicitor can get the same sentence. Prosecutors stated in a sentencing memorandum that Hernandez’s death was an “execution” and that Bailey and his “cohorts” “sanitized the home of weapons and (bullet shell) casings.”

In handing down the sentence, McKay read from a long list of factors that he considered.

Among them were that Bailey had a “lengthy criminal record,” has “served two prior prison sentences in Ohio, both drug related,” and Bailey served a federal prison sentence for firearms offenses.

Bailey’s appeal attorney, Martin Yavorcik, argued in the appeal that there was insufficient evidence for the jury to find Bailey guilty of aggravated murder under the “theory of complicity” in Ohio law.

Yavorcik argued that “complicity requires far more than mere presence. To convict on a theory of complicity, the State had to prove that Bailey acted ‘with the same intent to promote or facilitate’ the underlying crimes, and that he ‘incited, assisted or encouraged’ another in committing them.”

VIDEOS

The prosecution appeal filing gave more details of what Bailey’s surveillance cameras showed happening in the driveway in front of Bailey’s house and inside of the house after Hernandez was shot.

It states that as Hernandez lay dying in Bailey’s driveway, Winphrie exited the back door of Bailey’s home “with a pistol in his hand.” It adds, “Around the same time that the gray SUV rushed out of (Bailey’s) driveway, Winphrie left (Bailey’s) home in a dark SUV.”

As Hernandez lay in the driveway, Bailey “and his crew wiped the inside of the home clean.” Specifically, Bailey moved a coffee table in the living room; Shawn Jones, 35, wiped the couch; and Richard W. Lightner, 41, and Daniel Ramsey, 43, “assisted in cleaning up the living room,” the prosecution appeal filing states.

It adds that Bailey then “stood in the driveway” with Hernandez laying in the driveway. Marbly exited a black Audi that was in the driveway at the time of the shooting, and Bailey ran back to his house. Jones, Lightner and Ramsey were “also in the driveway with Mr. Hernandez.”

Eventually Lightner and Ramsey “pulled Mr. Hernandez off the ground and forced him into the front passenger seat of the black Audi,” the prosecution filing states. Marbly got into the driver’s seat with Ramsey in the back seat, and and Marbly drove away, it states.

After they drove away, Jones and Lightner “poured bleach on areas of the driveway in areas where Hernandez” was lying, the filing states.

LESSER CHARGES

Jones, Lightner and Ramsey pleaded guilty to felony tampering with evidence before Judge R. Scott Krichbaum in January for their roles in the case. At the time of their plea hearings, then Assistant Mahoning County Prosecutor Mike Rich said Lightner “aided in some of the cleanup in the house” but was not part of the homicide and was “in a completely different room, based on the evidence.”

Lightner’s attorney, Aaron Meikle, told Krichbaum that Lightner was “actually at the house remodeling a bathroom” for Bailey at the time of the killing and was in a “very difficult position.”

Rich said the Jones case was “similarly situated” to the Lightner case. Ramsey was initially charged with involuntary manslaughter, but that was reduced to tampering with evidence in his plea.

ORAL ARGUMENTS

The 7th District Court of Appeals has scheduled oral arguments in the appeal at 9:30 a.m. Nov. 5 at its courthouse at 131 W. Federal Street downtown.