Cincinnati police fatally shot 18-year-old Ryan Hinton during a stolen car investigation.
His father, Rodney Hinton, allegedly killed a sheriff’s deputy by ramming a car into him.
Rodney Hinton has been charged with aggravated murder and was denied bail at his arraignment.
On Thursday, an 18-year-old was fatally shot by US police responding to a report about a stolen car.
The next day, after being shown body-camera footage from the shooting, the teen’s father rammed a car into a sheriff’s deputy who was directing traffic, killing the officer, authorities say.
The back-to-back killings in Cincinnati have prompted ongoing investigations and sent a community into mourning. The 18-year-old’s father, identified as Rodney Hinton, 38, has been charged with aggravated murder and was arraigned yesterday. He did not enter a plea.
At Hinton’s arraignment in Hamilton County Municipal Court, a prosecutor said Hinton stopped his car in a way that was “calculated and premeditated” and “deliberately accelerated his car and purposefully caused the death” of the deputy.
Cincinnati’s chief of police, Teresa Theetge, declined to identify the slain Hamilton County sheriff’s deputy, citing a victim privacy law. The county sheriff, Charmaine McGuffey, described the deputy as “incredibly wonderful and dedicated” and said he had retired a few months ago but had continued to work with the department as a volunteer.
“He was so well-liked and so well-known,” McGuffey said at a news conference. “You could fill this building with the law enforcement agencies that respect him, love him, his friends, his family.”
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said on social media that he was briefed on the investigation and is “sickened by what appears to be an intentional act of violence”.
Rodney Hinton jnr. Photo / Hamilton County Sheriff's Office
The string of events began when Hinton’s son, Ryan Hinton, was fatally shot by Cincinnati police after allegedly fleeing with three other young men as police investigated a stolen vehicle. Theetge said at a news conference that the car was stolen from Kentucky and was parked at a condominium complex when police arrived at the scene.
Six seconds passed between the moment the officers arrived and when one of them fatally shot Ryan Hinton, Theetge said, who showed the officer’s body-camera footage to reporters on Friday. In the video, an officer can be heard yelling that one of the men they were pursuing on foot had a gun. Four gunshots can be heard before Ryan Hinton, running toward a wooded area in between two dumpsters, collapsed to the ground.
The footage, which Theetge described as “jolting” because the officer was running, does not clearly show a firearm in Ryan Hinton’s hand, that he was pointing it at the officer or that he was facing the officer who shot him. Theetge said the officers involved confirmed after the incident that Ryan Hinton had the firearm in his hand and was aiming it at the officer, who fired two shots that struck Ryan Hinton. He was hit in the chest and in the arm, Theetge said.
“Let me be very direct,” Theetge said at the news conference. “We cannot allow individuals to flee from officers with a loaded firearm aimed at them. When this happens, the outcome is almost always tragic. No one wins and everyone involved is affected.”
She later added that she does not expect officers to wait until they’re fired upon before they feel the necessity to fire. She also said that officers administered medical aid to Ryan Hinton until the fire department arrived.
One of the lawyers representing the Hinton family told the Cincinnati Enquirer that the father was “very distraught” when shown the body-camera footage Friday.
“He couldn’t finish watching the video,” attorney Michael Wright, of the Cochran Law Firm, told the Enquirer. “It was very difficult to watch for the family.”
After the meeting with the Cincinnati Police Department, Rodney Hinton left in his own vehicle “and that was the last we heard from him until learning about the tragic incident”, the Cochran Law Firm said in a statement.
At about 1pm Friday, Rodney Hinton allegedly drove his vehicle into the Hamilton County sheriff’s deputy who was directing traffic at an intersection outside the University of Cincinnati before its commencement ceremony later that day.
“This is an unimaginable tragedy for this community,” the Cochran Law Firm stated. The Hinton “family is heartbroken by this tragic turn of events and we are all devastated for the family of the officer who was killed”.
In a courtroom packed with uniformed police, Rodney Hinton’s public defender, Tom Ewing, requested bail for his client, which was denied.
