Man found guilty in slaying on Near East Side
Tyrik McDonald Glasco was nearby when a man was fatally shot in a Near East Side alley seven months ago, but he didn’t fire a shot and wasn’t seen with a gun.
That didn’t prevent a Franklin County jury from deciding on Friday that he was part of the group responsible for the crime. The jury convicted him of murder with a gun specification and intimidation of a witness in the death of 29-year-old Daegio Heron.
Glasco, 19, faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years. Common Pleas Judge Charles Schneider could add as many as three years for the intimidation charge when he sentences him on Wednesday.
The jury heard three days of testimony and deliberated for about 3 hours before delivering the verdict.
Assistant Prosecutors Daniel Hogan and Anthony Pierson relied on videos from surveillance cameras at the intersections of Mount Vernon Avenue and Graham Street and Taylor Avenue and Greenway to trace the movements of Glasco and others during a nearly two-hour period leading up to the shooting, which occurred just before 4 p.m. on Oct. 2.
The prosecutors said they couldn’t explain the motivation for the shooting, which occurred in the alley between Harvard Avenue and Greenway. Videos didn’t capture the shooting, but showed Glasco, Tivon D. Green, 21; Dajuan A. Crowley, 19; and a 17-year-old boy heading down the alley just before the shots were fired.
Testimony indicated that a fifth member of the group, a woman who has not been charged, had just lured Heron into the alley by calling him to arrange a marijuana purchase.
Key testimony was supplied by the 17-year-old boy, who agreed to testify in exchange for the dismissal of delinquency charges, and a 53-year-old homeless man who witnessed the shooting while collecting scrap metal in the alley.
The homeless man identified Green as the gunman who shot Heron from behind at close range and identified Glasco as one of the people in the alley. The teenager said he didn’t see the shooting, but heard the shots and watched Green and Crowley run from the alley, both tucking guns in their waistbands.
The victim’s girlfriend testified that she saw Glasco walking from the alley after hearing the shots and didn’t get a straight answer when she asked what he had done. The next evening, she said, Glasco waved a gun at her from an SUV outside her house and told her, “Keep talking. You’re next.”
“If he is not involved in this murder, why is he threatening someone a day later?” Hogan asked in his closing argument.
Defense attorney Frederick Benton said in his closing that the state hadn’t provided any evidence to support the allegations that his client aided and abetted in the murder. His mere presence and association with the others were not enough, he said.
In a rebuttal argument, Pierson said the evidence established that Glasco “knew exactly what was going to happen in that alley. This is not guilt by association. This is guilt by participation.”
Crowley pleaded guilty last month to involuntary manslaughter with a gun specification and is awaiting sentencing. Green remains at large.