Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Investigation shows firing at teen justified
YOUNGSTOWN
The Youngstown Police Department’s internal affairs division has found no wrongdoing on the part of a police officer who fired a shot at a teen who was attacking the officer with a board earlier this month.
Lt. Brian Butler conducted the more than two-week-long investigation into the shooting. The investigation determined that Officer William Ward believed his life or safety was in danger when he fired the shot.
“The investigation showed that your use of force was justified given your honest and reasonable belief that such force was absolutely and immediately necessary to protect yourself and to apprehend a violent felon,” Butler concluded. “The case will be classified as ‘proper conduct.’”
Ward, 36, and Officer Curt Hileman, 39, were sent to a house in the 300 block of West Indianola Avenue just before midnight Sept. 3 in reference to a combative 14-year-old boy using a board as a weapon.
A 41-year-old man told police the boy picked up the board and tried to strike him several times with it.
According to police reports, the officers yelled to the boy several times to drop the board, but he did not put the board down.
The boy’s mother yelled to the officers: “That board’s got nails sticking out of it. Watch out,” the officers said in their report.
The boy then hit Ward several times with the board in the back of his head, neck and back, causing Ward to fall to his knees.
Ward reported he then drew his sidearm and fired one shot toward the boy, with the bullet missing the boy and entering the ground in front of him.
The boy then backed away from Ward and advanced toward Hileman, who drew his Stinger (an electric shock weapon). The boy hit Hileman’s hand with the board and ran south toward the rear yard of the house before Hileman fired his Stinger, striking the fleeing boy with both darts and causing him to fall to the ground.
The boy was handcuffed and taken to the Martin P. Joyce Juvenile Justice Center on a charge of delinquency by way of felonious assault.
The officers went to St. Elizabeth Health Center for medical treatment. Ward was treated for a concussion after the attack, and Hileman injured his hand.
The internal affairs report notes that photographs taken at the scene documented paint transferred from the board to both officers’ uniforms where they were struck by the board during the attack.