Citing Marsy’s Law, police are not naming the off-duty officer, who is on paid leave pending investigation. It’s also not clear why that off-duty officer responded.
Kettering police were called around 2 p.m. Sunday to a report of a robbery at Meijer, 4075 Wilmington Pike.
“I have a customer here that said he was robbed out in our parking lot at gunpoint,” the store manager told police dispatch.
The customer also said the robber ordered him to withdraw money from the ATM inside the store and was waiting for him inside a blue pickup truck when the victim approached employees for help, according to police reports.
When officers pulled into the Meijer area, the suspect, described as wearing jeans and a ballcap, was on foot in the Meijer lot. Soon after, one officer reported spotting him on Tangent Drive in the neighborhood behind the Meijer store, toward East David Road.
The off-duty officer found the suspect behind a house in the 4400 block of Tangent Drive. The woman who lives there called 911 to say the suspect was in her backyard.
Investigators said the suspect pointed a gun at the off-duty officer, who then fired at him.
“They’re shooting,” the woman told a dispatcher. “Bullets are flying.”
A “shots fired” call then went out across police radios after an officer reported hearing three gunshots.
The woman caller was standing in front of her house “on the phone and waving frantically” at the officers before yelling they were in her backyard, according to a report.
“They have him. All the police are here,” the woman told the dispatcher.
The suspect was on the ground but got to his knees and was not cooperating with police orders, the report stated.
While keeping guns pointed at the man, officers were able to secure his weapon. The suspect was groaning and holding his right side where he had been shot, and officers “began administering first aid to the suspect by applying pressure to his wound,” according to the report.
Medics were called and arrived shortly thereafter for the suspect, whose injuries were described as serious but not life-threatening.
Police then took a statement from the victim, who was waiting inside Meijer, according to the report.
The robbery and shooting are connected to an abduction at 1:30 p.m. Sunday from a business in the 4000 block of Burkhardt Road in Riverside, near Woodman Drive.
Kettering Police Chief Chip Protsman called in the regional Tactical Crime Suppression Unit to investigate the officer-involved shooting. Kettering police are investigating the abduction in Riverside and robbery in Kettering.
