Police identify drive-by shooting victim
19-year-old man killed
AUSTINTOWN — The victim of a fatal drive-by shooting on North Meridian Road on Sunday afternoon has been identified as Joquezz Robbins, 19, of Youngstown.
Police and 911 reports show Robbins was a passenger in a silver Ford Focus driven by his mother southbound on Meridian about 12:55 p.m. As they were in the left lane near Ribblett Road, the report states, a large black SUV pulled next to them, and someone began to shoot at the Focus. As soon as the shooting stopped, the Ford Focus made a U-turn where the mother told officers she returned to the Waffle House in Weathersfield, the place they were coming from prior to the shooting.
Robbins, whom a 911 report said was not breathing at the Waffle House, was taken to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital where he died after being shot one time, according to Austintown police Lt. Jordan Yacovone.
Yacovone said no one has been arrested, and his department is asking for businesses along the North Meridian Road corridor to turn in any video footage they have so detectives can have a chance to identify the black SUV and its occupants.
Neither the woman driver of the Ford Focus nor the passenger in the back seat, the woman’s other son, were injured, the report states.
Weathersfield and Youngstown police officers also responded to the scene of the Waffle House at 2725 Salt Springs Road in Weathersfield to help investigate the vehicle that had been shot up. Bullet holes were found on the passenger side of the vehicle.
The report states Lane ambulance was called to tend to the unconscious shooting victim, who was taken out of the passenger seat of the vehicle, according to a 911 report.
Police officers from Austintown and Youngstown for a short time Sunday afternoon blocked out a portion of North Meridian Road so they could search for shell casings.
One caller to Trumbull County 911 dispatchers reported seeing the shooting, with a man “kind of hanging out of the passenger side” of a gray vehicle traveling on North Meridian. The man told a dispatcher: “I don’t know if it was a rampage or what!”
Several 911 calls were taken from people at the Waffle House, with one woman offering to give CPR just as McDonald police arrived.
One hysterical caller, after many unintelligible screams, yelled to the dispatcher: “Get here! Get here! My brother has been shot!”
Yacovone said he doesn’t know a motive for the shooting, before which Robbins, his mother and brother were at Waffle House eating during the noon hour of Mother’s Day. Many other diners were horrified about the sequence of events at the restaurant, and many customers stayed there longer because they were blocked by emergency vehicles.

