No charges for off-duty Kettering officer who shot, wounded man in yard behind Meijer

Kettering police were called around 2 p.m. Oct. 8 to a report of a robbery at Meijer, 4075 Wilmington Pike.

“I have a customer here that said he was robbed out in our parking lot at gunpoint,” the store manager told Kettering police dispatch.

The customer also said the robber ordered him to withdraw money from the ATM inside the store and was waiting for him inside a blue pickup truck when the victim approached employees for help, according to police reports.

When officers pulled into the Meijer area, the suspect, described as wearing jeans and a ballcap, was on foot in the Meijer lot. Soon after, one officer reported spotting him on Tangent Drive in the neighborhood behind the Meijer store, toward East David Road.

The off-duty officer found the suspect, later identified as 24-year-old Enrique Perez Mendez of Harrison Twp., behind a house in the 4400 block of Tangent Drive. The woman who lives there called 911 to say he was in her backyard.

Investigators said the Perez Mendez pointed a gun at the off-duty officer, who then fired at him.

“They’re shooting,” the woman told a dispatcher. “Bullets are flying.”

A “shots fired” call then went out across police radios after an officer reported hearing three gunshots.

A gun was still in reach of Perez Mendez after he was shot and got up to his knees and would not raise his hands for responding officers, according to reports.

While keeping guns pointed at him, officers were able to secure his weapon. Perez Mendez was groaning and holding his right side where he had been shot, and officers “began administering first aid to the suspect by applying pressure to his wound,” according to the report.

Medics were called and arrived shortly thereafter for the suspect, whose injuries were described as serious but not life-threatening.

Perez Mendez is charged with two counts of aggravated robbery and single counts of kidnapping, improper handling of a firearm in a motor vehicle and a misdemeanor count of criminal damaging.

The incident in Kettering is connected to a robbery about a half hour earlier on Oct. 8 at La Tapatia — a Mexican grocery store at 4941 Burkhardt Road in Riverside. Police say Perez Mendez had a gun and robbed the store before firing one shot while behind the sales counter, according to an affidavit filed in Kettering Municipal Court.

Perez Mendez then approached a man and told him to hand over his money and cellphone. He ordered the the man to drive him in the man’s pickup truck to Meijer to withdraw all the money from his bank account at the ATM inside the store, the document stated.

Perez Mendez is next due in court Jan. 17 for a scheduling conference. A trial date has not been set.