Leocadia blog

Ohio fraternity house shooting kills 1, hurts 11

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Two men involved in a dispute at a fraternity house party left the house and then returned, firing shots into the crowd early Sunday and killing a Youngstown State University student and injuring 11 other people, a police chief said.

Youngstown police Chief Jimmy Hughes said the house just north of the Ohio campus had been bustling with 50 or more people, some as young as 17. Six of the injured were students, authorities said.

"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."

Investigators are trying to identify the shooters based on accounts from eyewitnesses, and the people who were shot have told police they had no problems with the suspected shooters, Hughes said.

"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."

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, said Christopher Cooper, a legal officer for the fraternity.

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 on his hips and legs, and an autopsy is planned Monday, said Dr. Joseph Ohr, a forensic pathologist with the coroner's office.

The 11 injured were taken to nearby St. Elizabeth Health Center, and eight of them had been treated and released by early afternoon, hospital spokeswoman Tina Creighton said. She said she could not release the conditions of the other three.

"This is one of those days that every university president across the country, as well as many other officials, always dread," university president Cynthia Anderson said at a news conference on campus. She had visited the wounded and their families at the hospital earlier in the day.

Anderson said she had been assured by police that there was no threat to the northeast Ohio campus.

The shooting happened at a two-story brick house in a neighborhood of once-elegant homes, many of which are now boarded up. No one answered a knock at the door Sunday afternoon.

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. Brown said men living in the house were friendly to him and once offered him a beer and a ride as he walked home last fall.

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Associated Press writers Kantele Franko in Columbus, Ohio, and Sofia Mannos in Washington contributed to this report.