YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) – One woman was killed and one man injured following a double shootout on the West Side today.
The shootings give the city 21 homicides for the year and a total of 99 people were shot. For the whole of 2020, 98 people were shot dead in Youngstown.
Police said they were looking for a silver Kia Sportage with license plate JLU3363 in connection with the incident.
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Officers were called to a house behind a building on 1213 Salt Springs Road shortly after 10 a.m. where a woman in her late 40s was shot and a man in her late twenties was wounded. According to the police, the man is in critical condition.
The officers gathered evidence in front of the house. One person sat in a patrol car, sobbing and hysterical, pounding the door with his fists. Later, when detectives tried to calm him down, the person exclaimed, “I saw my mother dead! I saw my mother dead! “
The injured man was taken by ambulance to St. Elizabeth Health Center to have his wounds treated.
A person who lives across the street said he heard a crack like a gunshot, and seconds later the man in the patrol car ran out into the street yelling, “Somebody shot my brother!”
The man said when he tried to call 911 he was told that there were already three other callers about the shooting.
Sometimes there are fireworks in the neighborhood, but not at 10 a.m., he said as another man was having a beer behind him.
“That was definitely a shot that I heard very vividly,” said the man.
The detective supervisor Lt. Ramon Cox said it was too early to establish the link between the victims and the shooter. However, he said detectives have a suspect.
The shootings have now resulted in 25 shootings in the city this month. fatally four of them, including a 10-year-old girl last week. She was killed within a period of time that 11 people were shot in just over 24 hours.
Cox acknowledged that the increasing shootings as well as the lack of officers made it difficult for the police, but added that they would not be deterred.
“The men and women of Youngstown Police Department worked this through and will do it,” said Cox.
The 21 murders the city has this year are two more than the city had at that time last year, a year that saw a total of 28 murders, with 27 of those murders caused by gunshots.
More people were seen that month than any month since October, when 19 people were shot. Last year 60 people were shot at this time.
This is a developing story.
