YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (AP) — Two men angry over a dispute at an Ohio fraternity house party left the gathering and returned early Sunday, spraying bullets into a crowd and killing a Youngstown State University student who was trying to separate two groups, authorities said. Eleven other people were injured, including a 17-year-old with a critical head wound.
The men were arrested and charged later Sunday with
aggravated murder, shooting into a house and 11 counts of felonious assault,
Youngstown police Chief Jimmy Hughes said. The suspects are in their early 20s
and from the Youngstown area, but Hughes withheld their names pending further
investigation.
"These guys were in the location for a little
while before the shooting occurred," he said. "Something happened
that they became unhappy. They had some type of altercation."
The shooting occurred at a two-story brick house in
a neighborhood of once-elegant homes, many of which are now boarded up. The
house party had been bustling with 50 or more people early Sunday, Hughes said.
"Somebody just got shot!" a caller tells
a dispatcher on a recording of the 911 call.
The Mahoning County coroner's office identified the
dead student as 25-year-old Jamail E. Johnson. He was shot once in the head and
multiple times in his hips and legs; an autopsy is planned Monday, said Dr. Joseph
Ohr, a forensic pathologist with the coroner's office.
Capt. Rod Foley said Johnson apparently was trying
to separate two groups when he was shot.
"(Johnson) was just an excellent, excellent
young man, and our loss runs deep," said Christopher Cooper, a legal
officer for Omega Psi Phi fraternity. The senior had recently traveled to North
Carolina for a fraternity program emphasizing manhood and scholarship, Cooper
said.
Johnson's fraternity brothers were trying to decide
whether to return to the house, he said. They were "very solemn, very
alarmed, very hurt," Cooper said.
The 11 people who were injured ranged in age from
17 to 31. About half of them were shot in the foot, police said. Two were hit
in the abdomen, and the most seriously hurt was the 17-year-old who was shot
near one ear.
They were taken to nearby St. Elizabeth Health
Center. Eight of them had been treated and released by afternoon, hospital
spokeswoman Tina Creighton said. She said she could not release the conditions
of the other three.
The university said six of the injured were
students.
Members of the university-sanctioned Omega Psi Phi
fraternity lived at the house, YSU spokesman Ron Cole said.
Omega Psi Phi doesn't own the house, Cooper said.
A neighbor, Rodger Brown, 54, said the house and an
adjacent home with Greek lettering indicating a fraternity often have parties
on Friday and Saturday nights but had caused no problems in the neighborhood.
"It's a nice, quiet neighborhood," he
said.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich planned to meet Monday in
Youngstown with YSU president Cynthia Anderson and Mayor Jay Williams to
discuss the shootings.
"This is one of those days that every
university president across the country, as well as many other officials,
always dread," Anderson said at a news conference on campus.
Anderson said she had been assured by police that
there was no threat to the urban campus in northeast Ohio near the Pennsylvania
border. The university has about 15,000 students with alumni including former
Kansas Jayhawks football coach Mark Mangino and fashion designer Nanette
Lepore.
Associated Press writers Kantele Franko in
Columbus, Ohio, and Sofia Mannos in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
(AP
Photo/Mark Stahl)
