WARREN — Serroyan J. Couto, 19, was arraigned Wednesday before Judge Andrew Logan in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court on aggravated murder in the March 31 killing of Damien Williams.

Couto, of Perkins Drive Northwest, was indicted Wednesday in a direct presentment to a Trumbull County grand jury. His aggravated murder charge also contains a three-year gun specification and accuses him of killing Williams with prior calculation and design, meaning a premeditated killing.

Williams was found on the floor of a School Street home with a gunshot wound to the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Logan was filling in for Trumbull County Common Pleas Court Judge Cynthia Wescott on Wednesday. He set Couto’s bond at $5 million and set Couto’s next hearing for April 22.

Couto was listed as homeless, but prosecutors say he was born in New Mexico. He is in the Trumbull County jail.

According to a Warren Police report, officers were dispatched to School Street for gunshots. Officers entered the home and found the victim. A suspect was found inside the home and taken into custody before being transported to the Trumbull County jail.

The Williams homicide is the city’s third homicide this year. There were seven last year in the city.

PREVIOUS HOMICIDES

The city’s first homicide was Feb. 9 when Darrell Staggers of Warren was shot in the face inside a vehicle in the parking lot of Hodas Tobacco at the corner of Paige Avenue and Elm Road NE.

A 911 report stated a caller saw a man being shot inside a vehicle by another skinny man wearing all black, who then fled the scene inside a red vehicle. The shooting happened at 12:20 p.m.

A caller to 911 from Hodas Tobacco said they had security video to give to police.

The windows of the vehicle Staggers was in had been shot out and shattered. There were also some bullet holes in the car.

The roadway on Paige Avenue had 17 yellow evidence markers where police took photos of the shell casings. Other callers to 911 reported that in addition to the red vehicle that fled the scene, a white vehicle parked behind the shooting scene also fled the area, heading toward Atlantic Street.

That same week, around 11 p.m. Feb. 11, Warren police responded to a call of shots fired at 1377 Mahoning Ave. NW and found 16-year-old Da’Mar McKinney of Youngstown with a gunshot wound in the parking lot of the apartment complex. The victim was transported by ambulance to St. Joseph Warren Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

About eight hours later, around 7 a.m. Feb. 12, several suspects were detained and later questioned by police. A search warrant was obtained for an apartment in the complex, and evidence was recovered.

Two 18-year-old suspects — Ashaud Duane Lee Johnson and Willis Leroy Smith IV — were indicted Feb. 18 by a Trumbull County grand jury. Smith is charged with aggravated murder with a firearm specification and tampering with evidence. Johnson is charged with aggravated murder with a firearm specification, two counts of tampering with evidence and one count of receiving stolen property-motor vehicle, according to court records.