Man charged with slaying during drug deal gone ‘sideways’

Police say Daevone Brown of McKeesport shot Christopher Kovach of Ohio in the head.

By JUSTIN VELLUCCI
TribLive

Police have made an arrest in the slaying last month of an Ohio man found shot in the head and slumped over inside his still-running vehicle in Pittsburgh’s East End.

Daevone Brown, 30, of McKeesport was arrested Wednesday and charged with homicide, attempted homicide and other offenses in connection with the death of Christopher Kovach, 35, of Lorain, Ohio.

Brown was taken Thursday to the Allegheny County Jail, then arraigned at 4:15 a.m., court records show. A judge denied him bail.

Investigators believe Kovach was shot during a drug deal and was targeted by at least two assailants.

Pittsburgh police were dispatched to the city’s Lincoln- Lemington-Belmar neighborhood for reports of gunfire and two cars fleeing shortly before 1:30 a.m. on June 21, authorities said.

Officers found a man, later identified as Kovach, bloody and groaning in the driver’s seat of a vehicle parked on the 7000 block of Churchland Street, according to the criminal complaint against Brown.

Kovach had been shot in the head and held a black duffel bag in his lap. Police said they later found seven pounds of marijuana inside.

First responders rushed Kovach to an area hospital in critical condition. He died the next day.

Investigators recovered shell casings from three different guns and four cell phones from the crime scene.

Police said fingerprints lifted from the driver’s side rear door of Kovach’s Dodge Durango led them to Brown.

An unnamed witness told police Kovach planned to sell marijuana in Pittsburgh to a man with whom he had spent time in federal prison, according to the complaint. The witness said Kovach traveled with a handgun.

“He told Witness 3 that the deal might go sideways, inferring that he needed the pistol for his protection,” the complaint said.

Another witness who was in Durango with Kovach was invited to “drive from Lorain to Pittsburgh to complete a drug transaction,” police wrote. “Witness 1 stated Kovach was in touch with the person who killed him before and leading up to the murder.”

Records show Brown and Kovach were “in the same area of the same prison” — the Federal Correction Institution Gilmer, a 1,240-in- mate, medium security prison in Glenville, W.Va. — in 2020 and 2021.

Kovach was imprisoned there from April 28, 2020 to Aug. 24, 2021, a Federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman told TribLive. He was sentenced to five years in prison on drug and firearm charges. Brown was at the prison July 15, 2020 to Aug. 1, 2023, the prison bureau spokeswoman said. He was sentenced to 84 months in prison on a firearm charge.

Making connections

On the night of the shooting, according to what Witness 1 told police, Kovach parked in front of an abandoned house on Churchland Street. Two people in a white car parked across the street told Kovach to go into a house, but Kovach refused. Instead, according to the witness’s account, the two people got into the back seat of Kovach’s Durango.

As the witness got out of the vehicle to go to the bathroom, Kovach screamed the witness’s name. That was followed by gunfire, with a bullet whizzing by the witness’s head, according to the complaint.

The witness fled, police said.

Police later found six spent bullet casings in the middle of Churchland Street and on the sidewalk nearby, the complaint said. Crime lab analysts said at least three guns were fired during the shooting.

Detectives used city cameras and license plate readers to connect Brown and another person to the scene of the shooting, the complaint said.

TribLive is not naming that person because there was no indication he has been charged in connection with the homicide.

Police, however, said narcotics detectives tried to pull him over on July 3 on a federal arrest warrant for a firearms violation. There was a vehicle pursuit and at the end the man evaded detectives and ran away. Police recovered two guns and a bag with jewelry.

The day before the homicide, according to police, the man was driving a white car consistent with the vehicle driven by the shooters.

Brown’s preliminary hearing is July 25. His attorney was not listed Thursday in court records.