Girl, 14, is Toledo’s 4th juvenile homicide victim this year
A 14-year-old girl was fatally shot Friday night when police said a man fired a gun into a crowd of people on a North Toledo street corner.
Zhonasia Ticey was treated at the scene of the shooting reported at about 8:20 p.m. and taken to Mercy Health St. Vincent Medical Center, where she later died. She is Toledo’s 17th homicide this year and the fourth where the victim was under 18.
Police arrested Jeano Lampkin, 18, about 5½ hours later and charged him with murder in the case. According to the arrest affidavit, Lampkin fired a gun toward a crowd of people, wounding Ticey at least once.
Arriving officers had found the victim collapsed at a corner of the intersection. No other injuries were reported.
Dr. Jeffrey Hudson, a deputy Lucas County coroner, said an autopsy revealed Ticey had been shot once in the back and the bullet damaged both her heart and her lungs.
Toledo’s three previous juvenile homicide victims were shot, and two of those three died within the past two weeks.
Desire Hughes, 7 months old, was killed late in the evening of April 27 when an occupant of another car pulled alongside one her father drove and shot into it. Jadiah Carter, 22, was arrested Tuesday evening and charged with first-degree murder in that case.
Less than three days after Desire’s death, Neiko McIntyre, 16, was killed during the wee hours of April 30. An autopsy revealed the Whitmer High School student had been shot at least eight times. As of
Saturday, no arrest had been made pursuant to that case.
Another vehicle-to-vehicle shooting, meanwhile, resulted in the Feb. 12 death of Damia Ezell, 10. She was a passenger in an SUV driven by her uncle, Kenneth White, 24, when a “dark vehicle with tinted windows” pulled alongside and an occupant opened fire. White was also shot but survived life-threatening injury. No arrest has been reported in that case.
Toledo City Councilman Vanice Williams, whose district includes the North End neighborhood where the latest shooting occurred, declined to comment Saturday.
Colleague Cerssandra McPherson, who has been outspoken about Toledo’s recent violent spasm that has included eight fatal shootings and a fatal stabbing since April 23, said the area “has been hit hard” and she is increasingly “lost for words” to respond to it all.
“I’m baffled,” McPherson said. “Now we’re just out shooting randomly into crowds? There are a lot of guns on the streets.”
And she blamed easy access to firearms on Ohio’s political leadership.
“We’ve got a governor that just has issued anybody can buy a gun,” she said. “...It’s probably going to look like the wild, wild west this summer — everybody’s going to have a gun.”
Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz did not respond to messages requesting comment.