Trotwood homicide victim feared for his life

Police are investigating a double homicide after two men were found shot to death in a car Monday night.

• One victim is 16 and a Fairmont High student
• The other is 20, of Trotwood
• Car was found in a driveway on Curundu Avenue
• Police: Shooting believed to be drug related
• Police: Gunshots fired inside, outside the car

UPDATE @ 3:45 p.m. (Feb. 5)

Fausto Sosa, 20, of Trotwood, who was killed in a shooting earlier this week, was a 2013 graduate of Franklin Monroe High School in Arcanum.

Harve Bowman, who helped bring Sosa to Ohio from New York to protect him from violence in the streets, said he met Sosa at age 12. He started attending church in the Bronx and did so until age 16.

“He came to me on the street and said ‘Harve you’ve got to get me out of here, they’re going to kill me,’” Bowman said, adding Sosa was shot at in New York at age 16.

“He attended church and was very respectable, for a couple of years without any problems. He was a boy with a huge heart and a love for people,” Bowman said.

A memorial service for Sosa will be held at 4 p.m. Feb. 21 at Highland Brethren in Christ Church in West Milton.

UPDATE @ 12:54 p.m. (Feb. 4)

Trotwood police Capt. John Porter said they are still interviewing witnesses and those with suspect information. He said evidence leads police to believe there were one to three other people present at the time of the shooting.

Police have recovered up to 10 shell casings from the scene. The vehicle was driven by Antoine Jones, 16, but Porter said it’s unclear yet who owns the vehicle.

UPDATE @ 7:08 a.m. (Feb. 4)

NewsCenter 7’s Gabrielle Enright this morning spoke with Anthony Clemmons, who is engaged to Antoine Jones’ mother and helped raised Jones for 14 years.

Clemmons described the 16-year-old Fairmont student as an “excellent kid. He didn’t deserve this at all. Period.”

“It’s heart-breaking,” Clemmons said. “You just can’t think. You never want to lose a child, especially when you raised him all these years to be a fine young man.”

Clemmons said Jones was a straight ‘A’ student at Miamisburg. Jones had been living with his biological father in Kettering for about a year, he said.

“He was a good kid, turned to the streets,” Clemmons said. “He let the streets and his peers influence him a little bit. Evidently, he was hanging with the wrong crowd. When kids leave your home, you don’t know what they’re doing. Only the few hours they’re in school you know where they’re at. After that, you don’t know.”

Clemmons said the family is “destroyed” over the loss of Jones.

“I would never wish this on nobody,” Clemmons said. “But everybody that was involved, I want them to pay for this.”

UPDATE @ 1 p.m. (Feb. 3)

Kettering Schools Superintendent Scott Inskeep said grief counselors have been made available for students and teachers at the school.

“Anytime you lose a child it’s just a horrific thing,” Inskeep said, his first time in a 14-year career. “We are just so heartfelt for the loss of their family.”

Inskeep said Antoine Jones had transferred to Kettering Fairmont from Miamisburg during his sophomore year in 2015. Inskeep said Jones had been on track to graduate on time.

“What we’re facing today more and more is the fact that culturally we’ve got to be prepared for anything to happen,” Inskeep said. “We have to be ready.”

UPDATE @ 4:05 p.m. (Feb. 2)

The victims are 16-year-old Antoine Jones, a Kettering Fairmont High School student, and 20-year-old Fausto Sosa, of Trotwood, according to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office.

Capt. John Porter said the investigation, which is continuing, has revealed that gunshots were fired inside and outside the Cadillac and that semiautomatic weapons were used in what investigators believe was a drug related shooting.

Investigators also have learned that the shooting may have occurred up to two hours before Jones and Sosa were discovered in the car, Porter said.

EARLIER REPORT (Feb. 1)

Two males in their 20s were found fatally shot in a car parked in a driveway on Curundu Avenue and police don’t believe the incident was random, Trotwood Capt. John Porter said.

Police are working to notify the families of both before their names are released publicly.

Porter said that at approximately 9:45 p.m. Monday, police called to the 4300 block of Curundu Drive found the two males in a Cadillac. Investigators also found several shell casings in and around the vehicle, as well as bullet holes in the front of the sedan.

“It appears they had been deceased for quite a while,” the captain said.

The car, which bears temporary license tags, had been left running. Witnesses pointed it out to police and the call to police came from the resident who lives at the address where the car was found, Porter said.

He noted that several hours before the victims were found, police had fielded reports of shots fired on Curundu and on a street near where the car was found (either Nevada or Catalina avenue). Those reports were not confirmed, he said.

“We don’t believe this is a random-type event,” Porter said. “Two handguns found in the vehicle indicates they were armed” he said, and one angle investigators are working is that the shooting could have resulted from “some type of shootout between them and other people.”

A Montgomery County coroner’s investigator also responded to the scene.

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