Attorney: Slain Ohio teen grew upset when arrest threatened
COLUMBUS (AP) – A teen fatally shot by a deputy during an Ohio courthouse scuffle had become upset when the deputy threatened to arrest him at the end of a hearing, the boy’s lawyer said.
The Wednesday scuffle broke out when her client, Joseph Haynes, resisted the deputy, attorney Jennifer Brisco told The Columbus Dispatch. The shooting happened around the corner from the courtroom where the hearing was held.
“Joseph was a little out of sorts because of how things went at the hearing,” Brisco told the paper. “The officer threatened to lock him up and a scuffle broke out. Joseph was resisting, and that’s when there was a scuffle.”
Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien told the newspaper the teen was also upset by a judge’s order that he continue to wear an electronic monitoring device.
The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office says Haynes was shot once in the abdomen after a Juvenile Court hearing in Columbus. He died minutes later at a downtown Columbus hospital.
The boy’s grandmother told the newspaper the deputy should have used a stun gun.
“There was no reason why that cop would have been terrified of Joey,” Geraldine Hayes said.
The deputy, who has not been identified, sustained bruises and cuts consistent with someone who’d been in a hand-to-hand confrontation, Keith Ferrell, executive vice president of the Fraternal Order of Police lodge that represents Franklin County deputies, said Thursday.
“It sounds like the deputy had no choice,” Ferrell said.
The hearing involved a firearms charge against the boy, Rick Minerd, investigations chief with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, said Wednesday.