‘My soul hurts.’ Family wants answers after 20-year-old is found dead on side of road
.jpg "Chyann Gruber’s family is mourning after she was found dead at 20 years old.")
Members of an Ohio family are leaning on each other for comfort after a 20-year-old woman was found dead on the side of a road.
“My soul hurts,” Angelic Shelton told McClatchy News.
Shelton’s niece, Chyann Gruber, was full of love and energy, she said.
“For her to be such a loving person, and such a small-framed loving person, with all that energy, to be treated in that manner, in the last moments of her life, it’s very disheartening,” Shelton said.
Gruber was the youngest of six siblings. She turned 20 on Nov. 21. Then, less than three weeks later, her life was cut short.
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Captain Jason Simon told McClatchy News that the Youngstown Police Department received a call Dec. 9, just after noon from a driver who saw what appeared to be a body on the side of a road.
Detectives determined it was Gruber.
“Just unbelievable,” Gruber’s cousin, Million Perry-Phifer, said.
Gruber’s family said she was full of love.
“She’s always been a kid person. … She’s always been that one, she caters right to the kids. They just love her,” Shelton said.
Perry-Phifer said Gruber was especially close with her 3-year-old niece, becoming like a second mom to her.
“She was inseparable from her. She wouldn’t go to anybody else, she wanted her titi all the time,” Shelton said.
Gruber was family oriented and loved to help in the community, Perry-Phifer said. She was the youth coordinator for the Persayus Way Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to combating gun violence among youth.
Shelton said Gruber was close with her siblings and father, especially after losing her mother to an illness in 2021.
Now, her family is mourning her death.
“That was his baby,” Shelton said. “For someone to die the way that she died, and to actually be, I’m gonna use the word disposed of, even though it hurts my feelings to say it, that’s exactly what they did to her.”
Simon said Youngstown Police are not releasing the circumstances of Gruber’s death, but it is being investigated as a homicide. He also said it does not appear that her body was moved.
The body was found with multiple gunshot wounds, according to WKBN.
Shelton said the family is doing its best to be strong, but there’s a long road ahead.
“Hopefully they catch the person that did it and it’s something that’s going to sting for a while, to say the least,” Shelton said.
No arrests have been made. Simon said there are several persons of interest.
Youngstown is about 75 miles southeast of Cleveland.
This story was originally published December 13, 2023 at 2:27 PM with the headline "‘My soul hurts.’ Family wants answers after 20-year-old is found dead on side of road."
