Sgt. Matthew Morgan and patrol officer Lester Spinks were the two officers who fired their guns after they responded to a domestic situation the night of June 28 in the 2100 block of Gay Drive involving a man with a gun.
Morgan and Spinks were placed on paid administrative leave, which is standard procedure.
James Tober Sr., was shot and died of his injuries at Kettering Medical Center.
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Officers were called around 10 p.m. by a woman who said 68-year-old Tober was yelling at her while possibly having a mental health episode. The woman said she was hiding and needed help, and that Tober had a gun.
“I told him that if he didn’t stop yelling at me I was going to call the police … and he went and got the gun and he said, ‘I’ll be waiting for them,’” the woman said in the 911 call.
When officers arrived, Kettering Police Chief Christopher Protsman said they found Tober, a white man, with a gun in the road and that he ignored orders to drop his handgun. Officers and Tober exchanged gunfire, he said.
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The officers, who were not hurt, performed CPR until medics arrived for Tober.
The Gay Drive incident is the first officer-involved shooting in Kettering since June 2018. Before then, the department had three separate officer-involved shootings between August 2017 and June 2018.
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