Warren shooting renews questions over security at convenience st - WFMJ.com News weather sports for Youngstown-Warren Ohio

WARREN, Ohio -

After a shooting on Warren’s Northeast side early Sunday morning took one man’s life and injured another, a debate has been reignited over the future of the convenience store where it took place. 

In July 2024, the Tribune Chronicle reported Warren’s city council voted in favor of not renewing Convenient Food Mart’s bar license, with officials calling it a “safety hazard” and a “problem site” that attracts violence and parties. The property has racked up 21 liquor license violations since 1996, and it was busted for having two gambling machines in 2023. 

The state liquor board ultimately renewed the license, but the store has since stopped selling alcoholic beverages after 2 a.m., and started closing its doors between 2 and 4 a.m. on weekends. According to city councilman Andrew Herman, neighbors say things have been quieter in the area since those changes.

But Sunday’s shooting broke through that quiet, and with city council set to weigh in on the issue again soon, Herman said he plans to vote against it a second time. 

“I’m going to vote the way that the people in my ward want me to vote, and it's a very clear ‘no’ for the people in my ward,” Herman said. “They see it as trouble.”

Management at the convenience store say their liquor license played no role in Sunday’s violence, because they were not selling alcohol at the time. According to Dawn Barr-Cobb, the store’s office manager, Convenient Food Mart does not sell alcohol at 5 a.m. 

“I've watched our surveillance cameras, and no, they were not served alcohol,” Barr-Cobb said. “They could have been drinking, but it was not from us.”

Heather Barr-Hankins, an employee who said she’s worked at the store for more than three decades, emphasized that the violence is “not just Convenient’s problem, it's the whole city's problem.”

“This can happen anywhere, and it does happen anywhere,” said Barr-Hankins. “We are not the only business in Warren that has had this issue with the crowds gathering and the fights, or even just, you know, the partying.”

According to Barr-Cobb, the office manager, the employee working Sunday morning had tried to get the crowd to disperse before the shooting started, to no avail. Barr-Cobb said the employee also called 9-1-1 at least once around the time of the incident, but a dispatcher never picked up. Screenshots from the employee’s phone, seen by 21 News, showed that 9-1-1 called back and left a voicemail response two minutes after the employee’s call, asking if help was still needed. 

Herman said he wants to see the convenience store do more to stymie the violence — possibly by not selling alcohol anymore, or by hiring overnight security. But he also placed some blame on the city’s law enforcement for not attacking the root of the problem.

“That would mean going after the drug problem in the city,” Herman said. “We have well over 100 drug houses, and it's been like that probably for 30 years, and we don't have new strategies.”

He also said even if Convenient Food Mart were to stop selling alcohol or even shut down, it would not serve as a long-term solution. 

“If they go from one establishment, they bring trouble to another one,” Herman said. “You'd have to shut down probably every place in the city.”

“I think it would solve the problem for that neighborhood, and the neighbors there would be very happy,” he later added, “but the same crowd is going to go out somewhere after the bar is closed, and bring trouble with them wherever they go.”