A police officer has been fatally shot while responding to a reported domestic disturbance.
Officer Justin Leo, 31, was shot just after 10pm Saturday in Girard, Ohio as he and another officer stood in the doorway of the suspect’s home. He was pronounced dead in a nearby hospital.
The suspect, who hasn’t been publicly named, was shot and killed by the second officer.
A radio call requesting all available units to respond to an ‘officer down’ included an officer telling a dispatcher there was a man with ‘several firearms’ who had been ‘drinking all day’.
Officer Justin Leo, 31, was shot just after 10pm Saturday in Girard, Ohio as he and another officer stood in the doorway of the suspect’s home on a domestic disturbance call
Leo grew up in the area that he served as a police officer and had five years on the force
A neighbor said that he witnessed the horrific scene from his home.
‘We just started looking through the window and we watched both officers approach the house, knock on the door and it looked like they engaged in conversation for a few minutes,’ Arron Wayland told WYTV.
‘It seemed like one shot from inside the house, then the second officer side-steps and shot three to four times.’
Wayland said he had never met the suspect, but that he was shocked at the shooting in his normally quiet residential neighborhood.
The weapon used in the shooting was a handgun, said Ohio Attorney General’s Office spokeswoman Jill Del Greco, who provided few other details.
Leo was a five-year veteran of the police force in Girard, a town of roughly 10,000 about 70 miles southeast of Cleveland.
The shooting occurred on this block in the town of roughly 10,000 residents
Girard had never before lost a police officer in the line of duty, said mayor James Melfi.
‘It’s personally the saddest day of my life,’ Melfi told Fox8. ‘I’ve known the officer since he was in the first grade.’
Leo’s parents were with him when he passed away in a Youngstown hospital, Melfi said.
‘We woke up a different community,’ said Melfi. ‘We woke up shaken like we never shook before. I don’t know how and when we get back but we have to do that in honor of Officer Leo.’
The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is investigating the shooting.
Leo (second from left) is the first officer on the Girard force to be killed in the line of duty