Prosecutors say $30 debt led to fatal Lorain shooting

ELYRIA — A dispute over a $30 debt set off a series of events that ended with Ricardo "Rico" Calloway, 19, being shot dead in the driveway of the Lorain home where he was living, Lorain County Assistant Prosecutor Laura Dezort told a jury Wednesday. Matthew "AJ" Mason, 21, is charged with two counts of murder, two counts of felonious assault and one count of tampering with evidence in the 2017 shooting on West 22nd Street. His trial began Wednesday before Lorain County Common Pleas Court Judge John Miraldi. "Ricardo Calloway is dead because the defendant owed him $30 and they argued about it. Then he shot him," Dezort said. "That is the value, apparently, of life." Dezort and Assistant Prosecutor Tony Cillo sought to prove to the the jury, made up of eight women and five men, that Mason pulled the trigger and fled the state. He was arrested a week later in Augusta, Maine, along with two other people. On the evening of March 22, 2017, a group of people, including Calloway, was hanging out in the house before the shooting happened, according to testimony. The group had finished smoking Black and Mild cigars and was watching TV when Mason unexpectedly showed up with Jerome "Frenchie" Fields. Not long after they arrived, Calloway confronted Mason about the money he allegedly owed him, and Mason said he would give him the money but never did, testified Jazzmyn Evans, who has a young daughter with Calloway. Witnesses testified Fields became upset about the money, getting into a verbal altercation with Calloway that spilled into a physical fight in the kitchen. That tussle was quickly broken up, but Calloway went into his bedroom to change into clothes better suited for fighting, planning to take the dispute outside, witnesses said. The situation escalated from there when several of the people in the house went to the driveway, where Calloway was shot once in the chest, witnesses said. According to James Hale, who testified that he lived in the house and was outside when the shooting happened, Mason pulled the trigger. In front of the jury, he held his fingers about a foot apart, indicating how close range he remembers the shooting to have been. After being shot, Calloway stumbled back into the house while the gunman fled the scene. Calloway told Evans to call the ambulance, she said. He was pronounced dead in the bedroom. Lorain police Patrolman Chris Harris testified that witnesses immediately identified the shooter as Mason when he arrived at the scene. Mason's attorney, Mike Kinlin, pressed Evans and Hale on why some details of their accounts to police at the crime scene did not match up with what they told the court Wednesday. In his opening statement, Kinlin told the jury that the witnesses' varied recollections of the incident, including what type of gun was used, make them unreliable. "Each person tells something different, and like I said, they are not minor differences," he said. "These are lies." He argued that there is no physical evidence to tie Mason to the crime, just the eyewitness testimony. Contact Dylan Reynolds at (440) 329-7123 or dreynolds@chroniclet.com. Follow him on Twitter @DRey1357.