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Mom, grandmother want answers in 18-year-old’s shooting; Canton police say death may be gang-related - Akron Beacon Journal

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CANTON — A woman has been arrested in connection with the July 21 shooting death of a young Canton man in a public housing complex, but she's not accused of pulling the trigger.

Police say they are trying to find out who did.

They also believe the gunfire that left Brandon Bushe dead and his childhood friend with gunshot wounds may have been gang-related, and possibly even related to a shooting death that happened a couple of hours earlier across the city.

Brandon Bushe’s mother and grandmother, however, say the investigation into the 18-year-old’s death has been buried by police who have been side-tracked by so many other shootings and by a lack of public concern.

"We know somebody saw what happened," Bushe’s grandmother, Diana Mihal, told the Canton Repository from her home on Thursday.

"All those people in that neighborhood, they say, ‘We loved him so much, we loved him sooo much,’ then they won't speak up," Mihal said, adding that she knows many of them know who killed her grandson. "Just one person’s got to speak up on that tip line. Anonymous! Shame on them if they don’t. It would really help us if they do."

She and her daughter — Bushe’s mother, Dawn Millar — say that despite people in the neighborhood citing fear of retaliation, the young man’s killer remains free, free to live his own life and free to kill again.

Millar, through tears, issued a plea to people in that neighborhood to talk to police: "It would help us to get closure."

Bushe was killed in the Stark Metropolitan Housing Authority apartment complex at Robin Court and Pulley Place Southeast, apartments that sit across the street from the Skyline Terrace Apartments where his mother says he’d been living for nearly a year.

Bushe’s death was the second of three shooting deaths to occur within the overnight hours of July 21 into July 22.

Ronald Pleasant and another young man had been shot to death outside of a Louisiana Avenue Northwest house occupied by people who neighbors say are a group of Shorb Bloc gang members.

Police were still on the scene at Louisiana Avenue and neighbors in the SMHA complex have said they already knew Pleasant was dead before shots rang out in their own neighborhood, killing Bushe and leaving his friend wounded.

And a few hours later, a hail of gunfire at a house on Clarendon Avenue Southwest left a sleeping 19-month-old Ace Lucas dead and his twin brother with gunshot wounds.

"There’s been too many other shootings, so many that they’ve pushed him to the wayside," Mihal said about the investigation into her grandson’s death.

Police say that’s not so.

Investigation

"We are actively working this case at this time," Capt. Dave Davis said Friday. "We do have individuals who are persons of interest in this case. We are continuing to follow up on information at this point."

Information has stopped coming in. However, detectives are following up on what they’ve received so far.

"Detectives do have things they need to do with this case, basic investigatory processes," Davis said.

They also have video — one from a private resident who happened to be recording when the shooting happened — and a video from the SMHA.

"If anybody does have more video, we would love to see it," Davis said.

But information is needed and people in the area are tight-lipped and unwilling to share.

"No witnesses or people that we talked to in this homicide have been forthcoming or cooperative in any way with detectives," Davis said. "We do believe that more than one person, probably several people know what happened, but no one has been willing to come forward with any information for us. No one is being cooperative, absolutely. There’s just this general attitude in the community."

One woman was accused of hiding a gun to keep investigators from finding it.

Zaria Jones, 22, of Pulley Place Southeast, was arrested Aug. 6 by federal agents with the U.S. Marshals Violent Fugitive Task Force on a felony charge of evidence tampering. Stark County court records show she is accused of removing the gun from the scene of the Pulley Place shooting and concealing it to keep investigators from finding it. She was indicted by a Stark County grand jury and a hearing has been set for Oct. 2. She was released from jail after posting a $10,000 bond.

But no one’s been arrested for actually pulling the trigger.

While detectives are looking into every aspect of the shooting that left Bushe, Pleasant and the Lucas toddler dead, Davis said authorities right now "don’t believe this is related to the killing of Ace Lucas."

They are trying to determine whether the shooting that left Pleasant dead and another young man there wounded is related to the shooting that left Bushe dead and his friend also injured.

They also are looking into whether the shooting was gang related.

Millar believes her son’s death was gang related.

"He grew up and went to school with a lot of those [gang] kids. They lived close," she said.

Her son wasn’t a gang member, "not that I’m aware of," she said.

"But he had his little group," a group of young people who called themselves MMF, Money Making Family.

Millar said Brandon’s friends called him "B-man."

"They were all just friends," she said, adding that her son wouldn’t be in a gang because "Brandon just wasn’t really that way."

Who was Brandon?

Millar said her son worked for Shearer’s Foods for a while, and that he was unemployed for only a few weeks before he was killed.

Millar sat tearful in her mother’s home Thursday morning, looking over a memory book bearing dozens of pictures of her son's life.

She pointed out that he was just 4 pounds, 6 ounces when he was born, "a little bigger than a loaf of bread." One photo even shows him lying beside a large loaf of bread.

He grew up in Canton, "over on Watson Place," she said. "I had built a Habitat house and moved in when he was 2 years old."

He played baseball throughout school — up until ninth grade.

"He was good at it, too," his mother said. "He was a pitcher, he played second base, shortstop. He loved baseball, football, basketball. ... He loved music, liked hanging out with his friends. He was good at drawing."

He would’ve graduated from McKinley High School, but "he fell in with a bad crowd," she said.

The young man attended Choices alternative school instead and, she added, "he had two months to finish. They gave him the chance to graduate with his class. ... He just didn’t do what he needed to do and kinda got lost."

She and her mother just want to know who killed him.

"I know they fear for their lives because of retaliation, but there are tip lines out there and they are anonymous," Mihal said.

Davis reiterated that calls in to the city's tip line can indeed be kept anonymous.

He asked that anyone with information about the case to call detectives at 330-489-3144. But, he said, information can also be submitted anonymously through the city's TIP411 line, available at https://ift.tt/2UuaBV9.

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