STEUBENVILLE (OH)
Herald-Star [Steubenville OH]
April 8, 2021
By Linda Harris
A 36-year-old inmate at the Lorrain Correctional Institution has been indicted in connection with the July 2019 shooting death of William R. Ross III.
Shawn Deveron Brookins, formerly of Trotwood, was named by a Jefferson County grand jury Wednesday in a one-count indictment charging murder with a firearm specification. Trotwood is about 10 miles west of Dayton. Brookins had been identified by Police Chief William McCafferty as a person of interest just days after police found Ross’s body in an alley across the street from the Market Square Apartments on South Seventh Street.
McCafferty had said security cameras captured footage of a female exiting an apartment, followed by two males wearing sweatshirts pulled up over their heads before Ross, 24, staggered out of a Market Square apartment.
Grand jurors also returned a true bill against David R. Morrier, 59, a mental health professional charged with maintaining a three-year sexual relationship with a patient.
The indictment alleges Morrier, ordained into the Province of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Third Order Regular of St. Francis of Penance in 1997, falsely represented to a female that sexual conduct “was necessary for mental health treatment purposes.” It described the woman as “substantially impaired because of a mental or physical condition.”
Morrier is charged with one count of rape and two counts of sexual battery from November 2010 through the spring of 2013.