Officer who was shot due in court

Photo

Newton township police officer Thomas J. Colosimo

By Ed Runyan

The vest the officer was wearing was sent to a state crime lab.

NEWTON FALLS — A volunteer Newton Township police officer shot in his bulletproof vest Monday afternoon while on duty is due in Chardon Municipal Court today on a charge of failure to control for wrecking his West Farmington Village police cruiser June 14.

Thomas J. Colosimo, 35, of Newton Falls, was treated at Forum Health St. Joseph Health Center after the shooting and released.

Trumbull County Sheriff Thomas Altiere said Colosimo suffered a bruise on the lower part of his chest from the gunshot but is otherwise uninjured.

Colosimo, an Air Force veteran who testified before Congress in 2000 about the devastating health effects he suffered from receiving an anthrax vaccination while in the military, was also driving a Newton Township police cruiser that was destroyed after he parked it on railroad tracks and it was hit by a train in May.

Altiere said Detective Sgt. Peter Pizzulo and other deputies Tuesday went to the shooting scene, a wooded area off of Miller-Graber Road, looking for shell casings and other clues.

Two shell casings believed to be Colosimo’s have been found so far, but not the suspect or a shell casing from his gun, Altiere said.

Colosimo told investigators that he was on patrol around 3:30 p.m. and drove down a well road near the site of the train-cruiser crash on May 12 when a man opened fire on him. Colosimo said he fired back twice.

The man was described as being over 6 feet tall, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, Altiere said. The Ohio State Highway Patrol sent an airplane to the scene to help police find the suspect, but no one was found, Altiere said.

Colosimo was unable to provide any other information, Altiere said, adding that it was a “hectic situation” for Colosimo.

Colosimo, reached at home Tuesday, said he was “under orders” not to talk about the shooting. He didn’t explain who the orders were from.

The vest Colosimo was wearing was sent to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation to determine how far away from Colosimo the shooter was, the sheriff said. It is not known what type of bullet hit the vest, Altiere said, because officers didn’t want to disturb it.

Colosimo was driving a West Farmington Village Police Department patrol car June 14 when he crashed the cruiser into a guardrail and a culvert, according to a report from the Ohio State Highway Patrol’s Chardon post.

Colosimo told the investigating officer that he drove the cruiser off the road to avoid a collision with an oncoming vehicle that was in his lane. The other driver was never found.

The trooper cited Colosimo for failure to control, a misdemeanor. His arraignment on that case was set for 8 a.m. today in Chardon Muncipal Court. It’s not clear whether Colosimo was also an unpaid volunteer for West Farmington.

On May 12, Colosimo parked his cruiser on the tracks on Miller-Graber Road to chase some copper thieves. At 10:50 p.m. Colosimo radioed dispatch: “I’m going to be out on the tracks on Miller-Graber; advise CSX that I’ll be on the tracks; there’s some people out there.” Carlson said that Colosimo didn’t report that his cruiser was parked on the tracks at that time.

Colosimo later asked a dispatcher who had just arrived on duty if the train had been stopped as his cruiser was on the tracks.

But at 11:03 p.m., the locomotive crashed into the cruiser. The dispatcher working when Colosimo first started chasing the copper thieves was later disciplined for not calling CSX to notify the company that Colosimo was “on the tracks.”

Colosimo told Congress in 2000 that the military gave him three anthrax vaccinations in 1998 and 1999 and that they caused him great discomfort right away and led to other side effects, such as cysts on his scalp, headaches, fatigue, pain and light-headedness.

A Web site that says it is operated by Colosimo and his wife, Tracy, says he was discharged from the Air Force in January 2001 with 64 percent disability. It says he was awarded a 100 percent disability from Social Security and 160 percent from the Department of Veterans Affairs. It says his problems with low blood pressure caused by the vaccinations have caused him to fall hundreds of times.

In January, Colosimo said he was the coordinator of the Trumbull County Child Abduction Response Team, a group he decided to start in 2007 to assemble experienced and trained personnel and resources to quickly search for a missing child.

runyan@vindy.com