A Pittsburgh man already sitting in the Butler County Jail on unrelated charges is now facing attempted homicide and firearms counts for a daylight shooting on Clairton's State Street that left a victim hospitalized. Allegheny County Police obtained an arrest warrant for 27-year-old Darohn Winmon on August 5, nearly a month after the July 6 shooting.
Police say four people riding in a red vehicle shot the victim multiple times in the 300 block of State Street at approximately 1:44 p.m. on July 6, according to WPXI. Investigators reportedly believe the occupants of that vehicle targeted the victim directly rather than firing at random. The man was taken to a hospital and was listed in stable condition, per the same report.
Allegheny County Police charged Winmon, a North Side resident of Pittsburgh, with criminal attempt homicide, aggravated assault, criminal conspiracy, and firearm violations in connection with the shooting. He was booked while already in custody in Butler County on separate, unrelated charges, the station's report notes. It remains unclear how or when Winmon ended up detained there in the weeks after the Clairton shooting, and police have not publicly detailed a motive for the attack or said whether the other three occupants of the red vehicle have been identified.
A County Unit Steps In for Small-Town Police
The case fell to Allegheny County Police rather than Clairton's own municipal department, a common arrangement in the region. Under county operating procedures, the department's Investigations and Homicide Units provide primary investigative support to smaller municipal police forces like Clairton's when formally requested, according to the Allegheny County Police Department.
Winmon's record in the county stretches back years. Bellevue Borough Police charged an 18-year-old Winmon with violating the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act back in October 2017, after a search warrant executed on Gilliland Place turned up both narcotics and a firearm, according to The Citizen. More recently, in November 2022, CBS News reported that Winmon appeared in a recorded Allegheny County Jail video call discussing how another inmate — a suspect in the Brighton Heights funeral shooting — had removed his court-ordered ankle monitor while on house arrest.
A Separate Federal Case Surfaces Too
Federal court dockets show a separate criminal case, USA v. Winmon, was opened against him on July 23 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, per records reviewed on PacerMonitor. That filing landed between the July 6 Clairton shooting and the state arrest warrant issued August 5, pointing to law enforcement attention on Winmon across multiple jurisdictions in the same stretch of weeks.
If convicted of criminal attempt homicide, Winmon faces a statutory maximum of up to 40 years in prison if serious bodily injury resulted from the shooting, or up to 20 years if it did not, under Pennsylvania law. The aggravated assault charge, a first-degree felony under state statute, carries its own potential penalty of up to 20 years and fines as high as $25,000.
Another Violent Summer Along the Mon Valley
The State Street shooting adds to a run of gun violence that has gripped Clairton this summer. CBS News Pittsburgh reported that a July 13 shooting on Washington Avenue left a woman dead, and a July 25 double homicide outside a bar on Miller Avenue killed two more people — both within weeks of the attack on State Street. Hoodline previously covered the Washington Avenue killing and the Miller Avenue shooting as they unfolded.
State Street itself has seen repeated violence in recent years. In September 2024, a large street fight in the 400 block — one block from the July shooting — ended with one man dead and two others wounded, according to TribLIVE. In February, a man was critically injured in a shooting inside his vehicle at a Speedway gas station at 222 State Street, CBS News Pittsburgh reported at the time.
Clairton, an industrial city of roughly 5,945 people along the Monongahela River about 15 miles south of Pittsburgh, has a median household income of $36,538 and a poverty rate of 33 percent — roughly double the statewide average, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Whether Winmon's federal case, his history of firearm charges, or the motive behind the four-person attack will surface more details remains to be seen as the state case moves forward.
