Bizarre circumstances lead Canfield police to shooting

CANFIELD, Ohio - A young man in Canfield is shot in the chest, and after several false leads police arrest his friends and his friend's mother.

It all began Tuesday evening at a home on West Main Street when 52-year-old Jonla Dailey called 911 to report that one of her son's friends, 18-year-old Sean Swegan, had been hit with a firecracker.

"The boys were playing and one threw a bottle rocket and it hit one of his friends and he went real pale white and he's like almost passed out," Dailey told the dispatcher in a taped conversation.

As she spoke with dispatch, she says her son Shelton and his friend, 18-year-old Marc Hood, drove the victim to the hospital.

"He's not there anymore?" asked the dispatcher.

"No, he left," Dailey told her. "They jumped in my van, and before I was trying to tell them to wait until rescue got here, and he took off with him to going up to Saint Elizabeth."

But when she's put on hold, you can hear Dailey apparently directing her 14-year-old daughter to clean up a crime scene.

"Go try to straighten up that upstairs as much as you can in case them cops go up there," Dailey is recorded saying to someone in the room. "We're in big trouble."

"There's a bullet up there and everything!" a girl says.

"Get it hid," Dailey directs her.

From there the story became even more strange.

Later that evening, officials at the Austintown emergency room called Youngstown police to say they had a shooting victim and that witnesses with him said he was robbed at a business on Mahoning Avenue in Youngstown.

But police said they soon discovered there was no robbery.

They traced the victim back to the Canfield home. Police say it was Swegan's own friend, Marc Hood, who shot him.

"It was determined that the shooter was hiding in a closet in a bedroom when the victim came into the bedroom he pulled out a .38 caliber revolver, wanted to scare him, so he fired the gun knowing that he had put one single bullet in this revolver," explained Canfield Police Chief Chuck Colucci.

But the gun didn't go off right away.

"After the gun did not fire, he continued to fire the gun until it went off," said Chief Colucci, who believes Hood pulled the trigger about five times. "Ultimately he shot the victim in the right upper torso. What it comes down to is one poor decision after another poor decision and another poor decision."

Police believe Swegan's friends ditched the gun in Austintown before driving Swegan to the emergency room.

Hood is charged with felonious assault and tampering with evidence. Shelton Dailey is charged with complicity to felonious assault. Jonla Dailey and her son Shelton are both charged with tampering with evidence.

"It's difficult to comprehend that a mother, who knew that her son's friend was shot, misled us," said Chief Colucci.

Swegan is out of the hospital, miraculously surviving a gunshot wound to his chest. Police say he is cooperating with their investigation.