CINCINNATI — Two months before Mordecia Black was accused of stabbing a well-known gym owner in his Over-the-Rhine home, his girlfriend reported him for a domestic disturbance. That's when Cincinnati police discovered Black’s parole violations, but did not arrest him.
The WCPO 9 I-Team made the discovery while reviewing records related to a multi-family home at 1713 and 1715 Vine Street, where Black was apparently staying with his girlfriend after he fled a halfway house and cut off his ankle monitor in February.
"When he cut his ankle monitor, city law enforcement should have been notified immediately, and he should have been tracked down and apprehended. That this didn’t happen is unacceptable,” Pureval said a week after the killing.
WATCH: What we know about CPD's discovery of Mordecia Black's parole violations
City leaders blamed the Ohio Adult Parole Authority and the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction for not notifying police when Black disappeared and missed his weekly appointment with his parole officer.
CPD Sgt. Anthony Mitchell confirmed that officers got six hits on Black for parole violation when they entered his name into a mobile computer database on April 6 while responding to the domestic disturbance. Still, he said it did not indicate any details on the type of violations.
Black was in prison for nine years for felony assault and aggravated riot convictions and was to be on supervised release for three years and three months, beginning Jan. 8. But he disappeared from his halfway house in mid-February.
“If he were on scene, we would have taken him into custody,” Mitchell said. “We’re always looking for ways to improve and are monitoring how we handle incidents.”
But police knew Black was staying at that Vine Street home because they listed it as his address on their incident report.
Black’s girlfriend told police that she made him leave after they got into a fight earlier that morning. Then Black used the fire escape to enter a bedroom window. She came home to find Black with no clothes on and saw another female leave out the back door, according to an incident report.
“Officers talked to the female suspect, and she stated herself and Mr. Black walked into the location via the front gate, and the house door was open at the location. No warrants were filed due to officers having conflicting [sic] stories from all parties. The victim feels her place was broken into because it was a mess when she returned home, but there was not any evidence of forced entry,” an officer wrote in the incident report.
In that case, Black "by stealth" entered an apartment on Straight Street and walked into the bedroom. Two residents demanded he leave, and Black fled before police arrived. Police arrested Black for that case on June 5, when they charged him with Heringer’s murder.
Police were summoned back to 1715 Vine Street at 4:40 a.m. on June 4 for a reported burglary. The caller said keys, gym shoes and possibly other items were taken from the home 30 minutes prior. Police did not respond for several hours, according to the incident report.
Surveillance video obtained by WCPO shows a man who is believed to be Black running out of that Vine Street building at 4:11 a.m. on June 4, with shoes and other items in his hands.
The man is seen walking along the sidewalk on McMicken Avenue before he sits down. After getting up, he continues south along the street, which is in the direction of the Heringers' home. In another close-up shot, the man can be seen with a large knife in his hand.
He then continues further south down the sidewalk before he crosses the street to the area of the Heringers' home in the 100 block of McMicken Avenue.
Prosecutors said Heringer was stabbed in the neck while protecting his wife during the home invasion.
A grand jury indicted Black on 14 charges on June 16, including three counts of aggravated murder, five counts of murder, three counts of felonious assault, aggravated burglary, burglary, and trespassing into a home.
His wife Sarah Heringer, who co-owns Findlay Movement with her late husband, has been critical of police and the mayor. In Facebook posts, she said her husband was killed due to “negligence.”
"Mr. Mayor, if public safety were your top priority, Patrick would still be alive," Sarah Heringer wrote. "You acknowledged the pain, but you have failed to acknowledge your own role in this system's failure. You speak to the problem but refuse to name a solution. You've offered no public action plan. No reforms. No measurable change."
Last month, Sarah Heringer said she met with Pureval and Police Chief Teresa Theetge, who told her, "while they were aware that Patrick’s killer was out on parole, they were completely unaware that he had broken that parole — and that no one from the parole board had notified local authorities."
In the aftermath of this case, ODRC Director Annette Chambers-Smith told the APA to change its policy to include direct notification to a law enforcement agency when a warrant is issued on a targeted violent offender, "as a secondary and additional" notification to the one the arrest warrant is supposed to provide.
