Otto Coleman, 79, of Dayton, was sentenced by Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Kimberly A. Melnick to 10-15 years in prison for one count of felonious assault with a repeat violent offender specification.
Credit: Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Correction
Credit: Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Correction
The shooting
The charges stem from Aug. 11, when Montgomery County dispatchers received a call around 7 p.m., where it was unclear what the caller was trying to report. Dispatchers tried to call back five times, but were unable to get more information.
Dayton Police Chief Kamran Afzal previously said that the call appeared to be from Summit Behavioral Healthcare in Cincinnati, but after multiple attempts to call back failed dispatchers put in a call for officers to respond to a mosque and residence in the 700 block of North Broadway Street for a trespassing complaint.
According to court documents, on arrival police initially saw Coleman pushing a lawn mower across a gravel parking lot, then run into the backyard of his property when he saw the officers. Officers followed while calling out and asking if anyone had called police, police said.
One of the officers found Coleman behind his shed with a knife in his hand standing near the fence.
Body camera footage showed the officer order Coleman several times to drop the knife and start to back up as Coleman approached.
Coleman then started running toward the officer, who shot him, police said. He was hit in the chest, arm and leg, Afzal said.
The officer radioed dispatch about the shooting and requested medics, leading dispatch to issue a Signal 99, or call for officer assistance.
Coleman continued to hold onto the knife and ignored commands to drop it, Afzal said, and soon after the shooting officers requested crews with less lethal weapons.
Soon after, police notified crews they were going in with a shield and took the knife from Coleman, the chief said.
Credit: Jim Noelker
Credit: Jim Noelker
Coleman was taken into custody and medics took him to Miami Valley Hospital in life-threatening condition, but he was stable by the next afternoon, Afzal said.
A violent past
The Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office said that Coleman has a long history of violent crime, reaching back to an attempted murder conviction in 1973 in Maryland. In Montgomery County, he was also convicted of assaulting a police officer in 1998, then in 2010 he was indicted for assaulting an officer but found not guilty by reason of insanity. Finally in 2011 he was convicted of aggravated robbery, assault on a police officer and vandalism and sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison.
Coleman was on parole at the time of the shooting, the prosecutor’s office said. The parole was revoked and he was returned to prison.
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