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Marijuana tied to year’s trend of homicides

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By Kyle Nagel, Staff Writer Updated 10:30 AM Monday, June 29, 2009

In late March, Dayton police investigating complaints of an illegal after-hours alcohol operation at 1211 Alcott Drive stopped a man outside the house.

The man, 33-year-old Andre S. Abernethy, was carrying seven individually wrapped plastic baggies containing a total of 18.18 grams of marijuana and $3,119 in cash. He was arrested of a charge of drug trafficking.

On June 24, almost three months later, two men apparently attempting to rob the same address on Alcott Drive shot and killed Wallace Hailey Jr., 32.

He became the city’s 22nd homicide victim of 2009 and another example of a growing trend of killings that seem to involve the small-scale use or sale of marijuana.

“The trend in several of the homicides and even non-fatal shootings is that they’re related to marijuana use and sales,” said Dayton Lt. Patrick Welsh said. “That’s been an unusual uptick.”

In the past few years, Welsh said, many homicides occurred either around or because of the trafficking of heroin and cocaine.

Now, marijuana seems to be the dangerous drug. Police believe, for instance, that the suspect or suspects who shot and killed 22-year-old Richard Pogue Jr. on June 3 were possibly attempting to rob a home on Kingsley Avenue because they thought there was marijuana inside.

Two men were killed in a home at 515 N. Broadway St. that police believe could have been a place to buy marijuana.

But the amounts of marijuana involved in the incidents are relatively small, Welsh said.

“It has been an unexpected theme in these homicides,” he said.

Not all of the marijuana-related gun crimes are fatal. On June 15, a 22-year-old woman was shot in an apartment in the 200 block of Niagara Avenue that she shared with her boyfriend.

Police found 15 to 20 baggies of marijuana in the apartment that apparently had been prepared for sale and believe the shooting could have occurred by someone looking for money or marijuana.

Harrison Twp., in mimicking the city’s increase in homicides this year, has four to date, which is already more than the three the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office handled in all of 2008.

Sheriff’s Maj. Scott Landis said that of those seven homicides, only the most recent — the June 19 shooting of 54-year-old Robin Etherington of Troy at the Northland Village Apartments — has gone unsolved.

Just days before, Sheriff Phil Plummer had announced the assignment of two full-time deputies to patrol the complex, where two of the year’s homicides have occurred.

“The sheriff’s going to do something to get back to old-fashioned, community-oriented policing,” Landis said. “Then you can get rid of the unwanteds.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7389 or knagel @DaytonDailyNews.com

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