David family seeking a half million from city in wrongful death suit

City, police

named

in fed suit

By Becky Brooks

Man­ag­ing Editor

news@gazettepublishingco.com

The estate and fam­ily of James David Sr., who was killed after being shot mul­ti­ple times by Belle­vue Police two years ago on Sept. 22, is seek­ing $500,000 in a civil action filed Thurs­day against the City of Belle­vue and other par­ties in the Ohio North­ern Fed­eral Dis­trict Court in Toledo, accord­ing to Inter­net records.

The James David Sr. Estate, Karen David, James David Jr. and Stacy Thomp­son filed the action against the City of Belle­vue, the City of Belle­vue Police Depart­ment, Den­nis Bran­dal, Jef­frey Mat­ter and Erik Law­son, records show.

The pre­sid­ing judge will be David A. Katz in the per­sonal injury suit.

A jury is being demanded in the case.

Belle­vue Law Direc­tor David Walling­ford said Fri­day evening he had not yet received a copy of the suit nor was aware of it.

Mayor Don­ald Berkey said he was not aware of the fed­eral suit either.

On the evening of Wednes­day, Sept. 22, James David Sr., 60, was shot on his front porch at 314 Union St. by two Belle­vue Police officers.

Accord­ing to Gazette sto­ries, police received a report from a Green­wood Heights res­i­dent, James Arm­strong, just before 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 22 that a man was in the area bran­dish­ing a hand­gun. Offi­cers found David sit­ting on the front porch of his home hold­ing a gun.

The offi­cers respond­ing to the scene were Sgt. Jeff Mat­ter and Patrol­man Erik Law­son. Bran­dal is city police chief and held the post at that time.

Reports from police noted that the offi­cers talked to Arm­strong at a Green­wood Heights apart­ment com­plex; he reported a man was bran­dish­ing a hand­gun and pointed toward the David prop­erty on Union Street. Law­son, in his report on the inci­dent, noted he iden­ti­fied him­self and the man on the porch of the Union Street home jumped up and moved away toward the res­i­dence, stopped and turned back toward him point­ing a gun and allegedly aimed at Law­son. Law­son fired as did Sgt. Matter.

The Ohio Bureau of Crim­i­nal Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and Inves­ti­ga­tion han­dled the inves­ti­ga­tion into the shoot­ing while the two offi­cers were placed on desk duty.

A report from Law­son indi­cated that David’s hand­gun, a Ruger, was loaded.

David’s fam­ily and friends ques­tioned whether police accounts were accu­rate. They con­tended police fired 24 shots and believed David may have been sleep­ing on the porch when police approached him. Neigh­bors of the apart­ment com­plex also told the city coun­cil there had been prob­lems with the res­i­dents at the com­plex for over 12 years.

BCI&I’s report showed the offi­cers dis­charged 24 cas­ings between them, but the did not include how many times David was shot. The 99-page report also did not include a tox­i­col­ogy report, but an inter­view with David’s wife included infor­ma­tion that the man had been hav­ing hear­ing prob­lems. The report also showed that David’s wife, Karen, had made com­plaints about res­i­dents at the Green­wood Heights apart­ments and she had con­tacted the land­lord twice in four days prior to the shoot­ing com­plain­ing about ten­ants. Police records showed that sev­eral res­i­dents of the com­plex had mul­ti­ple arrests for assorted crimes.

At the time, Bran­dal told the Gazette that James David Sr. had no crim­i­nal record and police had no pre­vi­ous com­plaints involv­ing him.

In Novem­ber 2012, a San­dusky County Grand Jury cleared Law­son and Mat­ter of any wrong­do­ing in David’s shoot­ing death.

A report from BCI&I, accord­ing to a Gazette story, con­cluded that inter­views from wit­nesses and neigh­bors painted a pic­ture of a neigh­bor­hood dis­pute that had turned deadly.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Sep 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.