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Weekend homicide in south Toledo leaves business owners at shopping plaza questioning their safety

The shooting at the Meadowbrook Plaza Shopping Center that left a person dead has some business owners rethinking their safety.

TOLEDO, Ohio — The City of Toledo's homicide numbers continue to decline, but that doesn't mean people have stopped pulling the trigger.

On Sunday morning, the Glass City saw another deadly shooting, this time in south Toledo at a shopping center off of Hill Avenue and Reynolds Road.

The victim, Denzel Herron, was shot at an after-hours bar inside the complex and was pronounced dead at the hospital shortly after.

The Toledo Police Department told WTOL 11 that there are no suspects in the case right now. 

Herron was working at the after-hours bar when he was shot and his death has resulted in an outpouring of support on social media from family and friends. The shooting is also making some people rethink their safety.

"I was told that, 'Oh, you don't need to worry about it because it happened at 3:30 in the morning, right?' Well, who's to say that something like that couldn't happen when I'm here with my kids, and it's what - three doors down from here? That's terrifying," said Taylor Holloway.

Holloway wanted nothing more than to open her own candle store since the pandemic and she did that just over a year ago, right at Hill Avenue and Reynolds Road.

"We started in my kitchen, I invested, I had like $500 dollars and a t-shirt press," said Holloway. "I sold everything and invested in candle supplies."

But shortly after moving in, incidents inside the plaza started raising alarms.

"The internet cafe, they got raided, another business in the plaza, they had a cease and desist on the door," said Holloway.

She said the crowd that would pour out from the so-called after-hours club across the way left her unsettled, to say the least.

"Some of the people that come out here and are getting loud, and hooting and hollering and getting in fights, they're twice my size," said Holloway. "What am I going to do if they come in and they're upset with me for some reason? That's one of those situations where I go, 'Where is the security?'"

Holloway said she and other owners have complained to the building owner about these kinds of issues, but they fell on deaf ears.

She decided not to make a big deal about it, and then Sunday happened.

Someone was shot only a few hundred feet from her business where her customers come every day and where her kids play.

"We're kind of in the middle of sorting out what happened recently, my family and I, and we're trying to decide if this really is the right place for us and our business," said Holloway.

She said as a small business owner, appearances are everything and she can't afford to have police sirens wailing in front of her doors.

"That's the part that's really gnawing at me," said Holloway, "The cost that I now have to pay just for being in this plaza and that really sucks."

WTOL 11 was able to speak with the building owner in the parking lot on Monday and explained that business owners like Holloway don't feel safe.

He said that the owners know the deal and he had no desire to share his side on camera.

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