YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown Police Department has made it through the first eight months of this year with eight homicides, fewer than half as many as this time last year, when there were 17.

Over the past 12 months, Youngstown has seen 11 homicides, which is a 56% decrease from the 12 months before that, when there were 25, according to newly released data from the Youngstown Police Department and its crime analyst, Julie Orto.

“Our records go back until 1967, and at no point have we ever been at eight homicides at the end of August,” said Lt. Mohammad Awad, who focuses on such crimes as a supervisor in the Youngstown Police Department Detective Division. Youngstown had 10 homicides through the first eight months of 2014 and 11 homicides through the first eight months of 2023, Awad said.

Awad met with The Vindicator on Aug. 18 to alert the newspaper that he was going to have Orto compile homicide data at the beginning of September because of the significant reduction in homicides so far in 2025.

The stats released this week show that over the first eight months of the year, dating back to 2021, the number of homicides in the city has dropped from 23 in 2021 to eight this year. An inmate at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown was stabbed to death Aug. 31, but Awad said he does not count those in the Youngstown homicides.

CREDIT

Awad said in August that he credits police Chief Carl Davis and other people for the lower homicide numbers in recent years. He said Davis, who was appointed police chief in January 2021, “empowered the policemen; he empowered the investigators. I feel like Chief Davis puts the right people in place to make decisions, and he and the mayor were big in using technology.”

Awad also credited Youngstown police detectives for the improved homicide rates, as well as other types of crimes, such as felonious assaults and shootings. And he credited the local FBI Violent Crimes Task Force for its long-term investigation that addressed the “May criminal organization.” He said he thinks the investigation “has paid dividends” in helping reduce crime in the city.

He was talking about the 2022 federal indictments of 14 people in the Youngstown area accused of operating a drug trafficking organization that prosecutors said distributed crack cocaine, cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and fentanyl analogues (also known as synthetic opioids) throughout the Youngstown area.

Their indictment alleged that from 2020 to January 2022, Terrence C. May, 49, obtained large quantities of cocaine, crack cocaine and narcotics, which he then supplied to other members of the drug trafficking organization to be further distributed in the Youngstown area, according to a 2022 U.S Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio news release.

U.S. District Court Judge Benita Y. Pearson sentenced May to more than 14 years in prison in January 2024 after May pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute drugs and distributing drugs arising from the investigation. He also was ordered to serve 15 years of supervised release following imprisonment.

In addition, the indictment alleges that May and three other Youngstown residents who were indicted in the case maintained multiple premises in Youngstown for the purposes of distributing and storing drugs.

May also is under indictment in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on aggravated murder and other charges in the Dec. 10, 2021, shooting death of Zachary Chace, 30, in Youngstown. May is set for trial Oct. 6.

SHOOTINGS STATS

The Youngstown Police Department also provided a graphic showing that the number of shooting victims in the city has steadily declined since 2021, when there were 105 the first eight months of the year and 40 during the first eight months of 2025.

During the last 12 months ending Aug. 31, 2025, there were 67 shooting victims in the city, a 55.6% drop from the 12-month period ending Aug. 31, 2021, of 151 shootings, the graphic shows.