YOUNGSTOWN — Jonathon S. Simmons, 29, was jailed early Saturday and charged with Youngstown’s first homicide of the year — an 11 p.m. Friday shooting of a black man, 27, in the 2500 block of Ohio Avenue on the North Side.

A Youngstown police news release states that officers were called to Ohio Avenue just after 11 p.m. for a man who had been shot and a suspect who fled the scene. The victim, who is not yet identified, was taken to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital by ambulance, where he was pronounced dead, the release states.

Detectives, crime scene investigators and the Mahoning County Coroner’s Office began an investigation, and Simmons was identified as the suspect in the killing, the release states.

“While still processing the scene and interviewing witnesses,” the Milton Township Police Department “stopped Simmons for traffic violations and learned that he was being sought in the Youngstown homicide,” the release states. He was detained and taken to the Youngstown Police Department for questioning by homicide detectives and then taken to the jail on a murder charge early Saturday, according to jail records.

He will be arraigned today in Youngstown Municipal Court.

The police and coroner’s office are “still actively investigating this incident,” the release states.

The city’s last homicide before this one was the 2 a.m. Nov. 8 shooting death of Antwan Davenport, 37, at a home on Montclair Avenue on the South Side.

After a report of a shooting, officers and ambulance personnel responded and began life-saving measures on the victim. The coroner’s office was notified of Davenport’s death at 2:51 a.m., according to a coroner’s office press release.

PREVIOUS CONVICTION

Simmons was sentenced to five years in prison in November 2015 in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court after pleading guilty to seven counts of felonious assault with one firearm specification and one count of improperly firing at or into a habitation, according to common pleas court records.

The convictions were for his role among several people in a shooting at a Clay Street home on Youngstown’s East Side that police said was sparked by an argument at the Plaza View Court apartments, also on the East Side, according to Vindicator files. Seven people were in the home. One person was slightly injured and did not require medical treatment. Simmons was 19 at the time.

2024 HOMICIDES

The Youngstown Police Department recently indicated that there were 20 homicides in the city in 2024. The department does not count two officer-involved fatal shootings as homicides in its totals.

One of the two, the death of Mathue A. O’Malley, 27, was ruled a suicide. O’Malley shot himself to death while engaged in a confrontation with a Youngstown police officer early June 13 at a home on South Maryland Avenue on the West Side. A Youngstown officer fired his gun, but none of the shots hit O’Malley.

The other was the 5:30 p.m. Sept. 10 officer-involved shooting death of Shane Linderman, 50, at the Dollar General store, 1370 Belmont Ave. Linderman was fatally wounded after Youngstown officers responded to a report of a man stabbing himself and a woman inside the store.

The woman later also died of her injuries. That episode is still under investigation by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.