Two deaths occurred among four separate Toledo shootings within 24 hours Wednesday and Thursday, including the death of a bystander hit by a bullet its gunman fired toward police officers conducting a gang-related stop, authorities said.
John Toyer, Jr., 74, was sitting in his van at the Mobil gas station at Central and Detroit avenues about 10 p.m. Wednesday when a 15-year-old boy in a moving vehicle on Central fired toward the officers in the station’s parking lot, according to the police report.
Kevin Taylor, Jr., 15, appeared Thursday in Lucas County Juvenile Court on charges of murder and two counts of felonious assault on a police officer. Neither of the officers was hit, but Mr. Toyer was shot and later died at Mercy Health St. Vincent Medical Center. Young Taylor remained in the Juvenile Detention Center on Thursday, according to Patti Wardrop, deputy chief of the Lucas County prosecutor’s juvenile division.
Two of the three other shootings also involved teenagers, including one hours earlier and blocks away that caused the death of Tavion Brown, 15, who was taken to St. Vincent by an unrelated citizen from the shooting scene in front of an apparently abandoned house in the 300 block of East Central Avenue.
Police responded to the hospital after the Brown youth’s arrival there at 2:39 p.m., then located the crime scene on a concrete side stairway to the vacant house, where windows not boarded up were broken and the lawn was littered with debris that included a blue medical glove.
By Thursday two bunches of red and black star balloons had been placed there and blew in the wind, but neighbors said they knew nothing about the shooting.
Young Brown had last attended Leverette Elementary School through seventh grade before his transcripts were sent to the Ohio Distance & Electronic Learning Academy.
The Lucas County Coroner’s Office on Thursday formally declared both deaths to be homicides, bringing to 13 the number of such killings in Toledo this year. Autopsies revealed young Brown died of a gunshot wound to the chest, while Mr. Toyer’s fatal wound was to his neck.
Dennis McGhee, 72, a neighbor and schoolmate who once took a woodworking class with Mr. Toyer at Scott High School, on Thursday described Mr. Toyer as a friendly, easy-going Christian man who carried himself admirably.
“Unlike most of those upperclassmen, he spoke. If you were a junior or a senior, you didn’t speak to freshmen or sophomores back then,” Mr. McGhee said. “But that was 55 years ago.”
While they didn’t reflect so much on their high school days as neighbors, they talked about their family members and the importance of family. Mr. Toyer continued to be a good role model for Mr. McGhee’s 5-year-old grandson. Mr. Toyer made time to sit and talk with the boy — or sneak him a Popsicle during the summer months.
Mr. McGhee was devastated when he learned the news about his friend.
“I cried. John is the type of person that was easygoing. He was quiet, Christian — he led a Christian life — as far as I know, he never had any enemies,” he said outside of his residence in the 3200 block of Glenwood Avenue. “He was a good neighbor.”
Members of the Toledo Police Department Gang Task Force had conducted a stop in the Mobil parking lot when the shots were fired into the lot from a westbound vehicle on Central, police said.
Police pursued the suspect vehicle, but it did not pull over, according to a report, and young Taylor was apprehended following a brief foot chase after the vehicular pursuit ended near Wilson Place and Oakland Street.
Ms. Wardrop said plans have not been finalized, but it is likely prosecutors will seek to try young Taylor, a freshman at the Toledo Public Schools’ Westfield at Phoenix charter school, as an adult.
Under Ohio law, a juvenile court judge has the option to transfer a youth to adult court if the child was 14 or older at the time of the charge, the act would be a felony if committed by an adult, and the youth is not amenable to rehabilitation within the juvenile justice system.
“He’s 15, which would make it a discretionary certification. But given that he appeared to be shooting at police officers and subsequently hit an innocent bystander, it looks very likely that we will intend to pursue a certification and bind him over to adult court,” Ms. Wardrop said.
He is scheduled to appear for a pretrial hearing March 18 before Judge Denise Navarre Cubbon.
There was little evidence at the gas station Thursday of the shooting other than a streamer of police tape on a fence that blew around in the wind.
Mr. McGhee said he hopes that youths in Toledo can learn about gun safety and the consequences behind pulling the trigger.
“These kids think that the gun will make them the bigger person,” Mr. McGhee said about youth gun violence.
The two nonfatal shootings involved a 16-year-old boy wounded in a drive-by shooting Wednesday and an unidentified person shot Thursday morning in North Toledo, authorities said.
Mytaveon Walls of the 2000 block of Elliott Avenue was taken Wednesday to ProMedica Toledo Hospital by a private vehicle after suffering injuries police described as not life-threatening.
The victim in the shooting at 9:35 a.m. Thursday in the 3100 block of Cottage Avenue, near Park Street, was taken to St. Vincent with at least one gunshot wound, police said.
Anyone with information about any of the shootings should contact the Crime Stopper program at 419-255-1111.
First Published March 11, 2021, 12:18 p.m.
