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Deputies shoot, kill Southington man who was firing gun
By Ed Runyan
SOUTHINGTON
A Phalanx Mills Herner Road man was shot and killed by deputies with the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday when they responded to his house at 12:07 p.m. for a 911 call indicating he had fired his gun at his neighbor.
James Kovar told The Vindicator’s broadcast partner, 21 WFMJ-TV, that when he arrived at the house of his next-door neighbor, Charles D. Crandall, 76, to take him to the bank and grocery store, Crandall started firing a gun at him, hitting his truck.
A short time after deputies arrived, Crandall started firing at them, and the deputies fired back, killing him, Sheriff Thomas Altiere said. The deputies were not injured, nor were two Braceville Township police officers, who arrived about the same time as the deputies.
Crandall lived in a run-down house at 2625 Phalanx Mills Herner Road since at least 2005 and apparently had medical problems.
A sheriff’s report from February 2005 said the medical staff at St. Joseph Warren Hospital called the sheriff’s office to ask that deputies check on Crandall’s welfare and bring him back to the hospital.
Crandall told deputies he didn’t want to go to the hospital in an ambulance because he couldn’t afford it. Deputies took him there.
The report said Crandall had a test in the emergency room at the hospital the day before, and the test indicated his lungs were deflating, so he needed to return to the hospital immediately. Crandall had no telephone, the hospital said.
Altiere declined to identify the two deputies involved. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is in charge of the investigation. BCI vehicles were parked in front of Kovar’s house about 3 p.m., and the roadway in front of the house was impassable because of crime-scene tape.
The home is about 1,000 square feet and has a value of about $10,000 plus land value, according to the county auditor’s website. The listing for Crandall doesn’t indicate the date he purchased the property.
The only other time Crandall is listed in a police report from the sheriff’s office was July 2012, when he reported that two males ran through his yard and he discovered that someone had broken into an enclosed porch on the back of his house and stolen two chain saws.