Masontown man shot, killed
Masontown Borough police and state police investigate after one male allegedly suffered a gunshot wound to the head around 9:45 p.m. Monday outside on North Water Street.
Masontown Borough police and state police investigate a shooting turned fatal Monday evening in the area of North Water Street.
Mickens Jr.
MASONTOWN — Police have confirmed that a 34-year-old Masontown man who was shot in the head late Monday has died.
Masontown police Chief Joseph C. Ryan said Leon Mickens, who would have turned 35 years old today, was pronounced dead late Monday at Uniontown Hospital after suffering a gunshot wound to the head and a second gunshot wound to his upper back and shoulder.
Police were called to a location on Spring Lane at 9:55 p.m. for a report of two gunshots and a man lying in the street, Ryan said. When officers arrived, they found Mickens lying on the road.
He was immediately taken by ambulance to Uniontown Hospital, Ryan said.
Officials from the Fayette County Coroner’s office said that an official cause and manner of death remain pending autopsy results.
While police have not released the identity of a suspect, Ryan said investigators have identified a “person of interest” in the shooting and are continuing to investigate.
Ryan said that it appeared that Mickens and the suspect were in an argument just prior to the shooting.
“Right now, it seems to be an just altercation that escalated to a shooting,” Ryan said.
Officials said that the suspect fled the scene following the shooting on a bicycle and officers, said they believe the suspect used a .25-caliber handgun in the shooting.
Ryan said police contacted state police Records and Identification Unit and that troopers collected multiple pieces of evidence at the scene.
Spring Lane is located between North Water Street and Elmer Lane and is very near the location where Mickens’ sister, Joslyn Mickens, was shot to death more than a decade ago.
“His sister was shot and killed no more than 50 yards from the location of this shooting,” Ryan said.
In February 2001, Kenneth “Stick” Wells pointed a .380-caliber handgun at the 21-year-old, and shot her while the two were engaged in a sex act at his home on 110 N. Water St., according to trial testimony in Fayette County Court.
Following the trial in 2001, Wells was convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to 12 ½ to 25 years in prison.
At the arraignment for his sister’s killer in 2001, Leon Mickens talked to a reporter from HeraldStandard.com, suggesting his sister’s killer deserved to die in the electric chair.
“I want him to look me in the eye and hurt the way that I’m hurting right now,” Leon Mickens said in 2001.
Wells, now age 34, is in the State Correctional Institution at Rockview.
He last appealed his conviction in 2006.
That appeal was denied.
The location of the shooting is also the same area where a Greene County man shot and killed his mother and then himself following a standoff with police in December.
Police said Shaun Joseph Veres, 31, shot his mother, Elaine Joyce Veres, 54, both of Waynesburg, at a residence at on Water Street on Dec. 16.
Both were pronounced dead the following day at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va., the following day.
Anyone with information regarding Monday night’s shooting is asked to call police at 724-583-7779.