Mecca man shot by sheriff’s deputy identified

MECCA — Trumbull County Sheriff Thomas Altiere has identified the man shot and killed Saturday by a deputy responding to a burglary on Hoadland-Blackstub Road as John McGrath, 48, of Mecca Township.

Deputy Anthony Diehl will be on administrative leave, which is department policy, for three to five days, the sheriff said.

Altiere said the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation will investigate a burglary that led to the shooting and whether the shooting was proper.

Altiere said Deputy Diehl shot McGrath after the man fired on him. The man was taken by helicopter to University Hospitals of Cleveland, where he was pronounced dead.

The shooting happened after a burglary was reported at the home by a neighbor, Altiere said. He said that at 10:30 p.m. Friday, the sheriff’s department got a call from a neighbor in reference to two people trying to shoot the lock off at the house. The residents weren’t home at the time, he said. When a deputy got there, the two were gone, he said.

At 12:55 a.m. Saturday, the department got another call that the two were again trying to break into the house.

Altiere said that when Diehl arrived, he parked on the road and walked up the drive. He saw a man come out of the door with a filing cabinet. The man threw the cabinet into the back of a truck.

When Diehl ordered the man to stop, the man turned and fired at him, Altiere said. The deputy’s bullet struck the man in the torso.

Altiere said the second person who was caught at the home, a woman, was questioned and released without being charged.

Diehl was hired by the department in 1997.

Altiere said the last time a Trumbull deputy shot and killed someone was in 1990.