CINCINNATI — Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich has announced that her office's investigation into the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Ryan Hinton determined the Cincinnati police officer who shot him was justified.
Pillich said she was the only person responsible for the decision, following the investigation that was conducted into the shooting; the determination was not made by a grand jury.
During the press conference, she showed details of the investigation into the shooting.
Officers at the scene that day told investigators they saw Hinton with a gun as he fled from the alleged stolen vehicle on May 1. The officer who fired the shots that killed Hinton told interviewers he believed he had to shoot Hinton before Hinton fired.
"I thought I better get my gun out and shoot him before he shoots me and I fired on him before he could fire on me," Pillich said the unnamed officer told investigators.
Another witness interviewed, who Pillich said was a person in the car with Hinton, described a gun Hinton owned as brown or tan, with a long clip. Pillich then showed social media photos that depicted Hinton posing with a tan gun days before he was shot and killed. The prosecutor said that gun belonged to Hinton.
A gun found in the woods near where Hinton was shot also matched that description, Pillich said. The gun also had a bullet in the chamber, ready to fire, according to Pillich.
The prosecutor also pointed to seconds before the CPD officer fired shots, when Hinton was seen falling to the ground on a concrete pad near the dumpsters.
"Hinton makes the decision to pick up his gun and continue running," said Pillich.
She showed images of the scene, describing evidence markers that marked where Hinton was when he was shot, where the officer's shell casing landed and where the officer likely was when he fired; Pillich said Hinton was just 10 feet from the officer at the time.
"Hinton was only feet away," said Pillich. "It's the width of this doorway, how close is that to someone who is holding a firearm with one in the chamber pointed at the officer?"
She also said the coroner's autopsy report on Hinton refuted the idea that Hinton was shot from behind; Pillich said the bullet entered into Hinton "straight from the left side."
During her own press conference on May 19, Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco said the gunshot wound that killed Hinton was found in his left side, under his armpit. That was one of three gunshot wounds Hinton sustained; another was through the soft tissue of his arm and a third was found in his right "postero-lateral chest" adjacent to his shoulder, Sammarco said.
We asked Sammarco if Ryan was shot in the back.
"No, I said he was shot in the right postero-lateral near the shoulder," Sammarco said.
During the press conference, Pillich was asked about her decision to allow CPD to investigate itself and for her office to make the final decision, rather than asking Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Investigations to take over, or ask a grand jury to determine any charges.
She pointed out that BCI usually gets involved in jurisdictions without their own coroner's lab or investigative resources, which is not the case for CPD.
She said she chose not to take the case to a grand jury for similar reasons: Her office had the resources and expertise to make the decision themselves.
"I am required by law to make the decision I made," she said.
Pillich was asked whether she had anything to say about people who have watched the body camera footage and drawn different conclusions than the one this investigation determined.
"When you watch a video in split second time through a distorted wide angle lens, people can reach a lot of different conclusions," Pillich said, adding that's why her office took its time, combing the video frame by frame.
After Pillich's press conference, Hinton's family held their own press conference outside the Hamilton County Prosecutor's Office.
Hinton was fatally shot by a still-unnamed Cincinnati police officer on the morning of May 1.
Cincinnati Police Chief Teresa Theetge said that day officers with the department's Fugitive Apprehension Squad, along with other uniformed officers, became aware of a stolen vehicle at an apartment complex in the 2500 block of Warsaw Avenue.
When police approached the vehicle, four people ran from it, Theetge said. She said at least one of them, identified as Hinton, was armed with a gun.
Clips and still images from officer body cameras show the people who were in the car scattered when police pulled in and trapped the suspected stolen vehicle with their cruisers.
Body camera footage appeared to show Hinton running from officers, between dumpsters.
The officer who fired the shots can be heard saying "gun" before multiple gunshots ring out. Theetge said officials believe the officer fired roughly four to five shots; Hinton was hit by two of those bullets, Theetge said.
Hinton's family has hired The Cochran Firm to represent them; Michael Wright, one of the attorneys with the firm said his office was working to conduct their own investigation into the shooting.
Another member of the family's legal team, Fanon Rucker, said lawyers plan to look closely into the shooting to scrutinize whether Cincinnati Police Department's policies were appropriately followed.
"Certainly some people say 'well, he was doing bad stuff,'" said Rucker. "Even assuming the truth of that, there's procedures and there are policies that require those who hold life and death in their hands to move in particular ways."
Rucker said they aren't trying to decide Ryan's innocence or guilt in the moments before the shooting — they're only looking at whether or not the officer who shot him properly followed procedure and protocol.
"We are looking for the answer through our investigation of whether or not it was proper, whether or not the policies were followed appropriately and whether or not, by law and by facts that that tragic death was considered in the eyes of the law as justifiable," said Rucker. "I can promise you under no circumstance are the family members who are here will ever believe that it was justifiable."
You can read more about the case in the coverage below:
- TIMELINE: What we know about the deaths of 18-year-old Ryan Hinton and deputy Larry Henderson
- 'Two scared people' | Family of 18-year-old shot, killed by CPD want his death investigated
- 'Six seconds' | Blurry body camera shows short encounter between CPD, alleged suspects during fatal shooting
- Coroner: Ryan Hinton was killed by shot to side
- 'Both sides lose' | A barbershop conversation about the fatal police shooting of Ryan Hinton
