NEW CASTLE — Today is  DeAngelo Mercer’s 23rd birthday, and he will spend it in the Lawrence County jail without bond.

The Halco Drive man was picked up yesterday by New Castle police as their prime suspect in the homicide of Arnold Eugene Miller, who was found dead in a house at 309 Phillips St. on the city’s South Side after a suspicious fire on Feb. 25.

 Police determined that Miller, 46, of East Liberty, Pittsburgh, died of three gunshot wounds to the head and torso on Feb. 24 and that fire broke out around 5 a.m. the next day in the apartment where his body was found.

An eyewitness who was in the apartment during the shooting gave police a detailed account of what happened that afternoon.

According to Police Chief Bobby Salem, the detective bureau aggressively investigated the case, then charged Mercer yesterday with criminal homicide, two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of simple assault. He was arraigned by District Judge Melissa Amodie.



PIECING THE EVIDENCE

According to a criminal complaint, city detectives were called around 9 a.m. Feb. 25 to the  Phillips Street house, where Miller’s body had been found on the second floor, burned beyond recognition. A fire had broken out in that apartment during the night.

The 911 center had sent patrol units to the house at 2:15 p.m. the day before, having received a call that a man had suffered a head injury and was unconscious, but no one was found there, they said.

The call had been placed from a cell phone by a woman who gave police a false identity.

When police later identified the female caller and contacted her, she asked how Miller was and they told her  he was dead. She became hysterical and kept saying that he was alive when she had called 911, they reported.

She said she had gone to 309 Phillips St. and saw a man lying on the floor and no one else was there. She said he had a large lump on the left side of his head and she thought there was a bullet hole, according to the report.

She said she tried callng a few people including Mercer to find out what happened, and he answered his phone and it sounded like he was running. She said she told him Miller was dead and he relayed that to someone in the background and hung up the phone.

She said he then called her back and asked who saw her, and told her to “lock the door and leave,” she told police.



INTERVIEWS

Police detectives interviewed Mercer’s cousin, who allegedly had been with him and others at the apartment. He said Mercer left to go and get some marijuana while he was still at the apartment, but he left before Mercer returned, and shortly afterward, Mercer called him and said, “I just did some dumb (expletive).”

The cousin told police that Mercer had called him from his cell phone, and said, “Dude was big as hell. He tried to play me about the money for the rental,” and, “He ran up on me and I shot him.”

He said Mercer cotinued asking him what he should do with the body, and said that the “dude is still on the floor.”

He said he told his cousin he should go home, and Mercer asked, “Should I set the house on fire?”

The cousin said people were in and out of the house throughout the day and everyone thought the body was someone else who was sleeping.



EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT

The eyewitness who claimed to have seen the shooting occur told police that four men had Miller surrounded  and a juvenile was sitting in a chair with a gun on his lap.

The witness said Mercer was standing in the room and Miller was crouched down and almost falling backward, and that Mercer was holding Miller by his collar with his left hand, and holding a gun in his right hand and pointing it at Miller’s head.

The witness said Mercer was screaming at Miller, and Miller kept yelling for him not to kill him, that “I’ll give you what you want.”

The witness said Mercer was “enraged” and that “once he gets enraged, you can’t cool him down.”

As the witness glanced down at the stairs, a gunshot fired. The witness turned around and watched Mercer shoot Miller two more times and he had blood on his face and head. Then everyone in the apartment ran out of the building and Mercer kept yelling, “Move, move,” the witness told police.

When they went across the street, Mercer had blood on both of his hands, the witness told police, and he went to the sink and scrubbed to get the blood off and the others washed their hands too.

AFTER THE FIRE

Detectives arrived at the three-story frame house after the fire around 11:10 a.m. Feb. 25.

 A set of wooden stairs on the west side led from the front porch to an outside door to the second-floor apartment. The fire started in a room on the southeast corner of the house, and Miller’s body was found lying in front of a couch, police said.

According to police, an autopsy by Beaver County medical examiner Dr. James Smith determined Miller had died from three gunshot wounds to the abdomen, pelvis and head. Lawrence County Coroner Russell S. Noga ruled the death a homicide.

Police said they had received a call from a woman who was hospitalized whose boyfriend’s car was parked in front of the house where the fire occurred.

She said she had been at the house and that she had let Mercer, whose nickname is “Butters,” use the car. She also told police that Mercer and three other men, including Miller, were living in the apartment.

A downstairs resident who had been relocated to a hotel by the Red Cross after the fire, told police that between 2 and 2:30 p.m. that day he heard what he thought were three gunshots.

Miller, who was a veteran, was identified after the fire through dental records from the Butler VA Medical Center and by a piece of jewelry.  

Lawrence County Coroner Russell S. Noga said in an earlier report that Miller is believed to have died around 2:30 p.m. Feb. 24, based on information police received.

Although Miller had been staying in the apartment, he was not an official tenant, police said.

(Email: dwachter@ncnewsonline.com)