Brandon Crump Jr.

YOUNGSTOWN — Brandon Crump Jr., 21, will be sentenced at 2:30 p.m. today for shooting 4-year-old Rowan Sweeney in the head as the boy slept and also for shooting one man in the face, another man in various parts of his torso and two women in various places on Sept. 21, 2020.

The crime, which took place inside a home in Struthers, goes down as one of the most violent murders in Mahoning Valley history.

Two co-defendants already learned their sentences — Kimonie Bryant, 27, who got 20 years to life in what Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Anthony D’Apolito called the “linchpin” of a robbery gone bad; and Andre McCoy Jr., 24, who got 15 years to life as the inside accomplice who was shot in the face and nearly died.

Prosecu-tors are recommending that Crump get about 90 years in prison. However, an Ohio law passed in 2021 requires individuals sentenced on a murder they committed as a juvenile to be eligible for parole after about 25 years in prison. Crump was 17.

Because of evidence collected by investigators, Bryant was suspected early on to be the shooter. In fact, police called him “the suspect” who walked into the house and shot everyone, including Rowan’s mother, Alexis Schneider, who begged the shooter not to hurt her son.

Bryant turned himself in later Sept. 21 — about 18 hours after the 2 a.m. shootings — after Struthers police charged him in Struthers Municipal Court with aggravated murder. He has remained in the Mahoning County jail since that date.

A criminal complaint filed the afternoon of Sept. 21 already contained the details of Bryant texting with McCoy about 15 minutes before the shootings. The texts indicated they were working together to commit a robbery of Schneider’s boyfriend, Yarnell Green, who had a large amount of cash with him.

But the case took a surprising turn Feb. 5, 2021, when Green testified in Mahoning County Juvenile Court that Crump was the shooter. Crump was 18 at the time and was charged in the robbery of Green, but was not yet charged with Rowan’s killing. It took many more months before prosecutors started to seriously look at Crump as the shooter.

WHO WAS SHOOTER?

At a hearing in October 2021, Jennifer Bonish, county assistant prosecutor, finally gave credence to Green’s testimony about Crump being the shooter.

Bonish, then known as Jennifer McLaughlin, told D’Apolito there had been a “little bit of a shift in some of the witness statements” regarding who the shooter was. She said witness statements were now “leaning in the direction — at least with some of the eyewitnesses — that defendant (Brandon) Crump (Jr.) is in fact the shooter perhaps rather than (Kimonie) Bryant.”

It was at a time when there was much discussion about the testing of DNA from the scene of the killing and shootings. Attorneys for Bryant were asking for an expert witness to observe the DNA testing in person to ensure it was done correctly and fairly.

DNA evidence apparently solidified the conclusion that Crump, not Bryant, walked into the home alone and committed the crimes while Bryant waited in the car outside.

A document obtained by The Vindicator in February 2023 provided the first look at the results of the DNA testing done on items from the crime scene in Struthers.

A lengthy “Bill of Particulars” filed in the case stated that several bullet shell casings found inside the home were analyzed for DNA, and that DNA was identified as being Crump’s. A gag order in the case prevened the parties from discussing the facts of the case, so officials did not clarify what they thought the DNA results meant.

During closing arguments in Crump’s trial in February 2024, Mike Yacovone, then a county asssistant prosecutor, told jurors that prosecutors believed that Crump was the shooter, but he seemed to be suggesting that they still did not know for sure.

Yacovone said that under Ohio’s complicity laws, it did not matter whether Crump was the person who fired the shots. Crump was guilty of all the offenses even if he was just waiting in the car and not the shooter.

“It really doesn’t matter who the shooter is at the end of the day. We told you we believe the evidence will show that it’s Brandon Crump. I believe we have shown that it is Brandon Crump, but it doesn’t matter if he is or he isn’t. Because (the complicity law) says that a person who is complicit with another in the commission of a criminal offense is as guilty as if he or she personally performed every act constituting the offense,” he said.

“Each of these men (Brandon Crump Jr., Kimonie Bryant and Andre McCoy Jr.) assisted each other in the commission of this offense, and they shared the same criminal intent,” Yacovone said.

In opening statements in the Crump trial, Assistant Prosecutor Jennifer Paris said “Nobody escapes this, no one. Each one of these men were parts of a three-piece puzzle. For his efforts, Andre McCoy got shot in the head twice and a life-in-prison deal, with possible parole after 15 years in prison.” She added, “Bryant will have his day in court.”

After Bryant was arrested the day of the killing and shootings, Struthers detectives went to two addresses associated with Bryant, 54 Poland Ave., and 63 Cassius Ave., both in Youngstown, and gathered evidence, officials said.

B-THUMP

They also learned of someone named B-Thump, the street name of Brandon Crump Jr. Crump also was known as Brandon McDowell because McDowell is his father’s last name, Struthers Police Capt. Matt Haus has said.

It’s possible Crump’s juvenile criminal history and the details of his youth may be discussed during today’s sentencing hearing because Crump’s attorney, Lou DeFabio, gathered records from Youngstown City Schools and Mahoning County Children Services that DeFabio and an expert witness hired by the defense planned to analyze.

DeFabio told D’Apolito he had to ask for the records and funds to pay the expert witness. DeFabio said in a filing that the witness would explore the “chronological age of the defendant at the time of the offense and that age’s hallmark features, including intellectual capacity, immaturity, impetuosity, and a failure to appreciate risks and consequences; the family home environment of the defendant at the time of the offenses, the defendant’s inability to control his surroundings, a history of trauma regarding the defendant and his school and special-education history; and the way familial and peer pressures may have impacted the defendant’s conduct.”

Crump is not eligible for the death penalty because he was a juvenile at the time of the offenses, but he could get a life prison sentence.

Crump was convicted at trial of all 16 charges he faced, including aggravated murder in Rowan’s killing, four counts of attempted murder in the shootings of the four adults in the house and the aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery of the home.

Because relatively little information about the case was released to the public in the months leading up to Crump’s trial, the trial revealed that witness testimony was not the most important evidence.

Among the three surviving victims of the shootings, there were questions raised about their credibility. Rowan’s mother, Alexis Schneider, had been struggling with substance abuse at the time of the killing and shootings, but she was “over three years drug free” at the time of the trial, prosecutors said during opening statements.

When Schneider and fellow victim Cassandra Marsicola testified about having first identified Bryant as the shooter and then changed their identification to Crump, it was hard to know who to believe.

Green was no longer available to testify at the trial because he was killed outside of a downtown tavern prior to the trial. McCoy testified, but DeFabio described him as a drug dealer and said he and his girlfriend, Marsicola, were “high all the time” when the killing and shootings happened. McCoy also suffered a brain injury in the shootings. Bryant took a plea and was expected to testify at Crump’s trial, but prosecutors later declined to call him, saying they discovered that Bryant lied about some details. They were concerned that it would badly undermine his credibility.

Instead, jurors heard testimony about cell phone locational data, which told authorities where Crump and Bryant were at crucial times. A technician testified about a map she made showing that the phones of Crump and Bryant were on at the scene of the killing on Perry Street in Struthers at the time of the 1:52 a.m. shootings and that their phones were together in Youngstown in the hour or so before and after the shootings.

Jurors also saw incriminating text messages between Bryant and McCoy, as well as an incriminating video of a man “spreading out cash within one hour of Rowan’s death,” Paris said in her opening statement. The video was recovered from Crump’s phone when police arrested him Nov. 4, 2020. Also in the phone was a video taken one week before Rowan’s death that showed Crump holding a handgun.

“He may be my star witness,” Yacovone said of Crump. “He shows off a weapon, a Springfield XD-45 semiautomatic handgun, one week before the killing.”

WHY KILL?

A solid explanation of why the robbery turned so violent has never been told. The boy’s father, David Sweeney, told The Vindicator at the July 12 sentencing for Bryant and McCoy he still does not know why his sleeping little boy was treated that way.

“We hear of robberies all the time,” he said. “People do it with a gun. What would draw someone’s mind to just start shooting and to see a child sleeping and to think to shoot and kill him as well. I will never understand it.”

He said the sentencing for Crump is big, calling Crump “our main guy, even though they are all just as guilty.”

Schneider told D’Apolito at the July 12 sentencing that her son, her “sweet angel, was struck by multiple bullets with two fatal gunshot wounds” while he was “asleep in the comfort of his own home in my arms.”

Have an interesting story? Contact Ed Runyan by email at erunyan@vindy.com. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, @TribToday.