YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Partygoers stampeded to escape gunfire that killed one college student and wounded 11 people at a Ohio fraternity house, authorities said Monday as they searched for a motive in the weekend shooting.
Jamail E. Johnson, 25, a senior at Youngstown State University, was shot to death early Sunday as he tried to separate two groups at an Omega Psi Phi fraternity house party. Authorities say there had been a dispute, two men had left the house and then returned and sprayed bullets into the crowd. Among the injured was a critically wounded 17-year-old.
When the shots rang out, “it was practically a stampede atmosphere,” according to witness accounts, city prosecutor Jay Macejko said.
Investigators did not know what the initial argument was about and had yet to determine a motive for the shooting, Youngstown Police Chief Jimmy Hughes said Monday. The two suspects were neither students at the university nor members of the fraternity, police said.
The two men, Braylon L. Rogers, 19, and Columbus E. Jones Jr., 22, were charged with aggravated murder, shooting into a house and 11 counts of felonious assault, said Hughes. They were being held at the Mahoning County Jail, said jail officials, who did not know whether the men were represented by attorneys.
Court appearances for the suspects scheduled for Monday morning were postponed until Tuesday, and the charges against them could undergo “adjustment,” Hughes said.
Johnson and the others were shot off-campus at a two-story brick house in a neighborhood of once-elegant homes, many of which are now boarded. The house party had been bustling with 50 or more people early Sunday, said Hughes.
