Ex-officer wants sheriff to reopen his shooting case

The former officer said he has been shunned by the police community.

STAFF REPORT

BOARDMAN — A former Newton Township police officer said he didn’t shoot himself last summer and wants the case reopened by the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office or independently reviewed.

“I did not shoot myself, nor did my wife or anyone else I know,” Tom Colosimo said at a news conference Monday in the office of his Boardman attorney, John B. Juhasz. Juhasz was in court and unable to attend.

Colosimo said the sheriff’s office did not do what it was supposed to do, which would have been to approach the shooting with an open mind. He said a composite of the suspect was never released to the news media, not all witnesses were contacted, no dogs tracked the scent, and police departments that offered to help were not used.

Colosimo, 36, of Newton Township, said he no longer has a police officer commission but is attending school to be come a private investigator. He is also pursuing a criminal justice degree online.

He said he has been shunned by the police community.

Juhasz, in a statement issued after the shooting, questioned why a certain detective was assigned to the case when Colosimo had pursued charges against the detective’s friend. “If you want the public to believe that your investigation was objective, you do not start it out by placing in charge a person with an obvious ax to grind against Tom Colosimo,” the lawyer said.

Sheriff Thomas Altiere did not return phone calls seeking comment.

On July 7, 2008, Colosimo called 911 to let dispatchers know he was investigating suspicious activity (possible copper theft) around a cell phone tower on Miller Graber Road. A few minutes later, he reported being shot while wearing his bulletproof vest and said he fired back at the suspect.

After an investigation, Altiere and sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Peter Pizzulo said Colosimo’s account of what happened didn’t match what witnesses said. The case was declared open but inactive.

Colosimo said he shot twice after the suspect fired once but witnesses nearby heard two shots, not three, Altiere said last summer.

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation determined the bullet in the vest was from either a .38-caliber or 9 mm handgun. Colosimo was using a .45-caliber handgun, Altiere has said. The shot that hit Colosimo’s vest came from no more than 4 feet away, not the 17 feet Colosimo said, the sheriff said.

Colosimo said Monday that he never claimed the suspect was more than 6 feet away.

As part of the shooting investigation, Colosimo was to be given a lie-detector test. He said the first polygraph was not administered after more than four hours of a pre-interview; the second test was not administered because he was under duress. A third test, given not by investigators but by his own police department, was inconclusive, he said.

Juhasz, in his statement last summer, said detectives pursued the theory that Colosimo shot himself. The theory included the idea that Colosimo wanted to make himself look like a hero in light of recent bad publicity.

Two months before the shooting, Colosimo was involved in the destruction of police cars in both Newton Township and West Farmington village. He had served as a reserve officer for the village but resigned.

In the township May 12, he parked a cruiser on railroad tracks near Miller-Graber Road and told the dispatcher to notify CSX Railroad, but that wasn’t done, and a train hit the cruiser while he went looking for copper thieves.

On June 14, he wrecked a West Farmington cruiser on a curve on Old State Road in Geauga County while traveling to Middlefield for gasoline. He said he swerved to avoid an oncoming car in his lane, but troopers from the Ohio State Highway Patrol in Chardon cited him for failure to control, and Colosimo later pleaded guilty to speeding, according to Vindicator files.