Local & state
SPRINGFIELD — Jason Dean was not the gunman who opened fire on a Dibert Avenue home, nearly striking a pregnant woman and a 1-year-old girl, a witness said in Clark County Common Pleas Court on Thursday.
The shooter was Joshua Wade, the witness testified Thursday.
“It was a young person. He had a young face,” Dovon Williams said.
Williams was one of more than a dozen witnesses who testified Thursday in the capital murder trial of Dean, now 37, who faces several charges, including murder, vehicular homicide and aggravated robbery.
The charges stem from a four-day crime spree allegedly involving Dean and Wade, then 16, who prosecutors describe as Dean’s “sidekick.”
The “crime team,” prosecutors said, murdered 23-year-old youth counselor Titus Arnold on April 13, 2005. Days earlier, prosecutors say the two also terrorized area residents in an armed robbery and a drive-by shooting of two Dibert Avenue homes.
Wade, who fired the shot that killed Arnold, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the murder and other shootings.
Dean was convicted of the charges previously and was sentenced to death.
The Ohio Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2010, determining Judge Douglas Rastatter made rulings and statements during the trial that “demonstrated bias against Dean and his attorneys that prevented Dean from receiving a fair trial.”
The drive-by shooting occurred on April 12, 2005, in which the shooter fired shots at a car parked in front of 604 Dibert Ave.
Bullets also sailed through the window of the home where Laroilyn Byrd was screwing in a ceiling fan.
Byrd testified Thursday she would have been shot if she hadn’t bent down to get a screw she dropped at the same time the shots were fired.
The gunman, whom Byrd said she didn’t see, was driving a gold Buick Riviera that sped off after the shooting and then returned and fired more shots at 609 Dibert Ave., where three adults were on the porch and a small child was in the doorway.
Williams and his then-pregnant girlfriend, Shanta Chilton, said the gunman looked at him as he stood next to his car across the street, and then turned in the opposite direction and fired at Chilton and others on the porch.
One bullet went through a man’s jacket.
“I said: ‘Oh my God. Oh my God’ and then I just dropped to the ground,” Chilton said.
Chilton’s best friend, Shani Applin, who was at the home with her 1-year-old daughter, recalled seeing fire coming from the car, grabbing her daughter and dropping to the ground.
Asked by prosecutors how close she, her daughter and others came to being shot and Applin said: “Real, real close. Centimeters close.”
The trial continues today.
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