Akron’s 13th homicide victim of 2017 had a string of bad luck even before being found shot multiple times Tuesday.
Stacy D. Parker, 27, had been shot, robbed at gunpoint and, depending on who you believe, either walked away from or was run out of Cleveland Clinic Akron General Medical Center after disagreeing with staff treating him there, police records show.
All of this happened in the 16 months before a man and woman driving Tuesday afternoon past a wooded area in West Akron called 911 to say they saw a young man they believed to be dead alongside Cordova Avenue near Thurston Street, just west of Interstate 77.
“I’m not looking at the body,” a woman told a dispatcher who asked for more information about what she saw. “I don’t want to look, I’m not going to look.”
When police arrived on the scene, they found Parker, unresponsive, sprawled in the grass. He had been shot several times and also, according to police, carried a gun of his own — a .40-caliber semiautomatic with a round in the chamber and nine rounds in the magazine.
Emergency workers transported Parker to Akron General, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.
Police did not say whether Parker, who lived on Garth Avenue a few blocks from the Akron Zoo, was shot on Cordova or dumped there.
Parker’s misfortunes date back to at least December 2015 when he told police he was robbed at gunpoint while walking through a field beside Kelly’s Drive-Thru in the 700 block of Copley Road.
A man with a 9 mm gun took his wallet and $20 cash, Parker said.
The next month, in January 2016, Akron police took another report involving Parker when they were called to Akron General.
Parker was a patient at the hospital at the time, a police report shows, but it doesn’t say for what he was being treated.
He told police he had trouble with the television volume in his room and three hospital security guards showed up, one threatening to “thump him.” Parker said he decided to leave the hospital and called his mother to pick him up.
Hospital security, however, said they forced Parker to leave hospital property after the nursing staff said he was causing trouble. Security at the time said they wanted Parker banned from hospital grounds, but it’s unclear if that happened.
Most recently, in June 2016, police records show Parker was shot.
Parker told officers he drove himself to Summa Akron City Hospital after two gunmen fired on him at Toby Terrace near Akron Fulton International Airport.
It’s unclear whether police ever arrested anyone in that case. And police Wednesday did not say whether they had a suspect in Tuesday’s shooting that left Parker dead.
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.