“We are 100 percent in support of our officer’s actions,” Englewood police Sgt. Mike Lang said. “That’s a situation that no officer wants to find themselves in but is always trained to respond to.”
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The incident was the second local police-involved shooting in recent days. Centerville police shot a teenager who pointed a replica gun at police on Thursday. The 15-year-old boy survived.
Lang said Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation is handling the criminal investigation and that Englewood’s department will do in the internal investigation. Lang said Corcoran’s body camera footage will not be released until later.
“The suspect was armed. The suspect refused multiple orders,” Lang said of Sunday’s incident. “A physical altercation broke out, ultimately leading up to the officer having to fire his weapon in defense of his own life.”
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Corcoran — a 17-year police veteran with 10 years at Englewood — saw Porter earlier Sunday in the parking lot of Hampton Inn at 180 Rockridge Road.
“The suspect was acting suspicious in that he was dressed inappropriately for the weather and was just king of hanging out in the parking lot of a hotel where he was not staying,” Lang said.
Dispatchers later got a call from the assistant manager of the Motel 6 at 9325 North Main Street to report a damaged a motel room.
“We found bullets in the room. They shot through our window,” the Motel 6 employee said of damage to Room 209. “The maintenance man checked it out. The bullets actually went through Room 134 and another room upstairs from another building. Then the housekeeper said that earlier the guest was walking back and forth and looking kind of awkward.”
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Corcoran also dealt with Porter on Christmas Day 2015, when the officer was to escort Porter and another suspect to jail during a stolen vehicle investigation.
In that report, Corcoran wrote that Porter asked if he had a kit to test for pesticides. Porter said he thought he and the other suspect were being poisoned by pesticides by their gang stalkers.
“While en route to the jail, Porter began to complain of chest pain, heart palpitations and his fingers and toes being numb from the pesticide poisoning,” wrote Corcoran, who took Porter to a hospital.
According to court records, Porter had several misdemeanor cases and a couple low-level felony cases.
Porter was convicted in January 2016 on two counts of receiving stolen property and one count of vandalism. He was sentenced to community control, which was terminated in November 2016.
Porter also had his intervention in lieu of conviction revoked after not successfully completing a drug treatment program, according to court records.
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Lang said that during his tenure with the department, the city had not had a police-involved fatal shooting. But there have been two previous officer-involved shootings, including one that involved Lang.
“In 2010, (Officer) Chip Ridgway, while off-duty at the time, interrupted an armed robbery at his family’s pharmacy in East Dayton and returned fire on the suspect,” Lang said. “In 1999, I fired upon an armed robbery suspect. In both cases, the suspects lived and were convicted. The shootings were cleared.”
Lang said Corcoran will be on administrative leave until the investigation is complete. Corcoran has been rated as “excellent” — the highest of four categories — on his last four job performance evaluations.
“Certainly, part of our mission is the preservation of life and protection of the public,” Lang said. “This is not how we like to things to end out, but certainly we’re thankful the public is safe and our officer is safe.”
Centerville police chief: 'There's a lot of grief' after teen shooting, B1
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