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Fatal Stabbing

City Man Sentenced To 21 Years In Prison

Tavion Turner

A 22-year-old Jamestown man has been sentenced to 21 years in prison and five years post-release supervision after pleading guilty in the 2017 stabbing death of 22-year-old Dyllan Ownbey.

Tavion Turner of Jamestown was sentenced Wednesday before Chautauqua County Court Judge David Foley. Turner pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree manslaughter, a Class B violent felony, on July 26, the day his jury trial was set to begin.

On November 28, 2017, at 6:50 p.m., Turner fatally stabbed 22-year-old Dyllan Ownbey during a fight on Willard Street in Jamestown. According to Jamestown police, Ownbey was walking down Willard Street with another person prior to being stabbed. Witnesses told police they saw two people fighting near the intersection between Peterson and Eagle streets. Ownbey was taken to UPMC Chautauqua where he died from a stab wound to his upper chest area. At the time of his arrest, Turner was 20 years old.

Turner had been scheduled to stand trial in November 2019 and again in May 2020, but those dates were pushed back. The case would have been the first murder trial since the pandemic began in 2020.

The Erie County District Attorney’s Office was appointed as a special prosecutor after Turner’s previous defense attorney, Jason Schmidt, was elected as Chautauqua County District Attorney in 2020. The case was prosecuted by Chief Gary W. Hackbush of the Homicide Bureau and Assistant District Attorney John G. Schoemick of the Felony Trials Bureau.

Similarly, the Cattaraugus County District Attorney’s Office handled the prosecution of Julio Montanez, who pleaded guilty to a charge of criminally negligent homicide, a class E non-violent felony, Monday in Chautauqua County Court. Montanez had been indicted on charges of second-degree murder and two counts of second-degree attempted murder in the death of Justin Gibbons, 28, who was killed around 1 a.m. Oct. 6, 2019, in Sherman during a reported drug transaction, but the case was settled with a plea to a lesser charge. Jason Schmidt, Chautauqua County district attorney, was unable to prosecute the Montanez case, so it was handled by a neighboring county’s district attorney’s office.

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