The 18-year-old victim of a fatal shooting in Whitehall this week killed himself while playing Russian roulette, police said.

The 18-year-old victim of a fatal shooting in Whitehall this week killed himself while playing Russian roulette, police said.

Whitehall officers were told of that scenario soon after they arrived at 141 Beechford Rd. on Monday night.

They found Rashaun D. McCrae of Striebel Road on the East Side critically wounded in a kitchen that reeked of �burnt and raw marijuana,� a police report states. He died that evening at OhioHealth Grant Medical Center.

Detectives spent several days confirming that the evidence matched the stories being told by friends of McCrae�s who witnessed the shooting, Sgt. Dan Kelso said. Investigators believe that the single-gunshot head wound that McCrae suffered occurred when he unintentionally shot himself, Kelso said.

An 18-year-old friend of McCrae�s told police that he had been sitting in the kitchen when McCrae came in, spinning the cylinder of a revolver and asking if he wanted to play Russian roulette. The friend said he declined, left the kitchen, and heard the gun go off as he walked away.

According to the police report, a 23-year-old woman and her friend watched McCrae take the gun from his back pocket.

�He showed them it was loaded with one round and spun the cylinder three times,� the report states. �He said something to the effect of, �Have you ever played Russian roulette?�, held the revolver to his head and fired.�

Residents of the neighborhood told police that they could hear yelling and arguing in the moments after the shot rang out at 8:54 p.m. One woman said in her call to 911 that she heard shouts of, �Why would you do this?�

A second caller to 911 described a chaotic scene and said he saw a young man carry a revolver upstairs.

tdecker@dispatch.com

@Theodore_Decker