Hearings postponed for men charged in shooting
Preliminary hearings for two men charged with the 2003 shooting death of a California man were postponed Wednesday.
State police said Howard Edward Irwin Jr., 39, of Charleroi and Michael Duncan, 34, of Amherst, Ohio, were each arrested Friday at their homes.
The third suspect, John Ira Bronson Jr., 54, is currently serving a federal sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary in Lewisburg for drug-related charges and has yet to be arraigned for his alleged role in the Feb. 3, 2003, shooting death of John Lynn Newman, Washington County District Attorney Steve Toprani said.
Police said Newman’s daughter found her father’s body in his car a half block from his home while she was on her way to school the morning of Feb. 4, 2003.
Police sad Newman’s daughter went home and got her mother, Brenda Newman, who returned to the car and unlocked it.
Investigators said she shook her husband, thinking he was asleep, and according to the grand jury presentment, she “was horrified when she felt his lifeless and cold body and saw blood.”
Investigators at the time found that no one in the neighborhood had seen or heard anything unusual, but there were indications that the case was related to drugs when Brenda Newman told them that her husband had been arrested for selling Oxycontin to an undercover officer and had agreed to act as an informant, setting up Bronson for a controlled buy in early October 2002. Newman allegedly owed Bronson several thousand dollars for drugs.
Toprani said that Newman was a family man who worked at a Canonsburg factory before suffering a back injury. He said Newman became addicted to the painkillers prescribed for him and, according to Toprani, he turned to dealing drugs to support his habit.
According to the grand jury presentment, Irwin, who had grown up in California and allegedly sold drugs at several locations in the borough, including the former Signatures Bar, introduced Newman to dealing drugs. According to the presentment, Irwin also introduced Newman to Duncan and Bronson.
A witness before the grand jury testified that Bronson had offered him $10,000 to kill Newman four to six months before the shooting took place, but he declined. The witness testified that Irwin asked him to show Duncan the route Newman used when selling drugs in California.
New hearing dates for Irwin and Duncan have not been scheduled.
Irwin and Duncan remain in the Washington County Prison without bond, while Bronson remains incarcerated in federal prison.