Friday, May 27, 2011
YOUNGSTOWN
City police are investigating whether an off-duty officer followed proper protocol in stopping a fight between two men, one of whom brought the officer to a crime scene.
Police charged Michael Baum, 41, of Burghill, with aggravated burglary in a home invasion Wednesday afternoon on the city’s South Side.
Baum is in Mahoning County jail and is to be arraigned today in Youngstown Municipal Court.
According to police reports, a 23-year-old East Indianola Avenue woman and her 25-year-old North Lima female friend were at the Indianola house at 3 p.m. Wednesday when Baum came through an unlocked back door carrying a handgun.
The women told police Baum ordered them to the ground and demanded money, then used the gun to strike one of the women twice in the back of her head.
Baum, before leaving the house, threatened to return, shoot everyone inside and burn the building down, the women said.
The North Lima woman then called her 25-year-old boyfriend, who left work and came to the Indianola Avenue residence after the incident.
According to police, Baum called the boyfriend to settle the dispute with the women and returned to the house shortly before 7 p.m., this time carrying a shotgun in his pickup truck and accompanied by his friend, Aaron Coleman, a Youngstown police officer who was off duty.
Baum told police he brought the shotgun because he believed the boyfriend would be armed.
When Baum got to the house, he got out of the pickup truck with the shotgun, placed it on the truck’s hood and got into a fistfight with the boyfriend.
According to the police reports, Baum fell to the ground during the fight, and the boyfriend grabbed the shotgun and fired one shot into the air. Coleman then identified himself as a police officer and took the shotgun, placing it back in the truck, the boyfriend said.
Baum and the boyfriend again started fighting, but Coleman broke it up, the boyfriend said. Baum was arrested and charged after other officers arrived at the home. The boyfriend was not charged.
Police Chief Jimmy Hughes said officers have talked to witnesses, who said Coleman did not get out of the pickup with Baum, who was carrying the shotgun.
“We have to determine exactly what happened. My understanding is that Officer Coleman said he was not aware that this person [Baum] was carrying a gun,” Hughes said.
The department’s internal-affairs division is handling the investigation.
Baum told officers he was trying to collect money owed to him for tires the boyfriend purchased. He said he brought a police officer as a witness and for protection.
The boyfriend, however, said the confrontation started over a drug debt the North Lima woman owed Baum.