SMOC house where suspect lived no stranger to police April 17, 2009
Dan McDonald 508-626-4416 Metrowest Daily News
FRAMINGHAM -- The man accused of shooting a police officer in the face landed in town through the Department of Youth Services, the state agency that deals with juvenile criminals.

Sahr Josiah, 22, of 25 Deloss St., has been charged with shooting Officer Phillip Hurton, 32, in the moments after the robbery on a cab robbery on Framingham's Southside on Tuesday night.

Originally from Boston, Josiah has lived at 25 Deloss St., a property owned by the social service agency South Middlesex Opportunity Council, for about six months, said Jane Lane, a SMOC spokeswoman.

He is not the first person to become entangled with criminal charges while living at the beige house on the short thoroughfare off Union Avenue, a few blocks north of the police station.

That address has made the police log several times in the past two years.

Last month, Robert C. Wills, 23, a 25 Deloss St. resident, was charged with driving without a license.

While no one answered any of the doors at the property yesterday afternoon, Wills' name, along with Josiah's were still scrawled on a piece of paper taped to the mailbox on the front porch.

In addition, Paul Ellslager, who has a lengthy rap sheet and Westborough ties, was arrested at that address last November in connection with a home invasion and drug heist in Enfield, N.H.

Ellslager was accused of storming into a home to steal a quarter pound of marijuana and some electronics from an 18-year-old who police say dealt drugs.

Ellslager, along with several of his siblings, has also been charged in connection with striking a man in the face with an aluminum bat during a group beating of one man in 2007 in Westborough.

Media outlets in Florida have reported that Ellslager has faced charges of cocaine possession, attacking a person with a tire iron, pulling a gun on police, and escaping from a courthouse.

In January 2008, Richard Mayhew, then a 22-year-old resident of 25 Deloss St., was arrested after he refused to leave a woman's apartment on Second Street. When police arrived at the apartment, Mayhew, standing outside, threw a kitchen knife under a car and was ordered to the ground at gunpoint, police said.

After his arrest, he refused to take off a rosary necklace in a holding cell. Mayhew eventually ripped it off his neck and whipped three police officers with the chain of wooden beads before being pepper sprayed into submission, police said.

Six months later Mayhew was arrested for violating a restraining order, assault and battery and intimidating a witness after allegedly getting in a drunken fight with his wife, Shannon, who was also arrested, police said. His listed address was 25 Deloss St.

Despite those incidents, Mushtaque Ahamad, the imam for the Masjid-E- Basheer mosque, adjacent to 25 Deloss St., said yesterday ``the street's usually pretty quiet.''

``We have never seen any problems,'' he said.

Nicole Gareau agreed. She said the most commotion she's seen while working at Deborah Freeman MacDonald Inc., an electrolysis and hair removal business on the corner of Deloss and Union Avenue, has happened this week as police investigated the shooting.

When told the man alleged to have shot Hurton lived at 25 Deloss St., Gareau said, ``He lives there? Gross.''

A SMOC house manager lives at the property, which has at least two apartments and can house at least six people.

Case workers, said Lane, are in and out during the day working with their clients.

Lane says SMOC does background checks on everyone whom the state refers to the house.

SMOC, says Lane, does not accept all referrals to that house. She declined to outline what would lead the agency to reject a prospective resident.

She said Josiah's alleged crime of shooting a police officer would disqualify him from living there now. The usual stay for tenants, says Lane, ranges from six months to a year.

Among the many charges Josiah faces related to Tuesday's shooting is one that accuses him of being an armed career criminal.

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