More than a month ago, the Akron Police Department released two grainy screenshots from a video showing parts of a white SUV they think was involved in the unsolved June 2 mass shooting incident in East Akron. On Tuesday, Police Chief Brian Harding said that, based on witness interviews, detectives believe the SUV was driven by the person who started the shooting.
“They describe that vehicle as pulling up slowly, the window going down, and the male that was in the driver’s seat starts shooting,” Harding said. “At that point after that, the vehicle speeds off, and we have multiple other people shooting back, returning fire.”
At a Tuesday press conference, Harding and Mayor Shammas Malik revealed a few more details about the complex case involving multiple shooters and reluctant witnesses that has stumped investigators for more than 50 days.
The investigation into the party where 29 people were shot, including one fatally, continues without any arrests. So far, limited information has been released publicly by the Akron Police Department about who may have been responsible.
The APD previously reported that at least one partygoer returned fire, that at least 45 shell casings were recovered, and that those bullets appeared to be fired by at least five different guns. It is unclear how many of the 29 gunshot victims were hit by the initial shooter and how many were hit when others returned fire.
One other key update from Tuesday is that the June 2 incident is at least loosely connected to previous crimes elsewhere, according to testing by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and its National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN).
Harding said NIBIN testing revealed two of the guns recovered from the scene were “linked to another case earlier in this year. Not in our city but a different city.”
Harding wouldn’t say which city the guns were connected to. It is also unclear if those guns were from the initial or responding shooters.
Legal distinctions exist between first shooter, responding shooters
Signal Akron asked Harding if the man accused of firing first from the white SUV and the responding shooters would be investigated or charged differently, even if the responding shooters were responsible for wounding some of the partygoers or killing the one man who died.
There are legal distinctions between the person who started the shooting and those who fired back, Harding said.
“There absolutely are,” he explained. “There might be a felony murder case for the first person who started this, there may be some charges depending on who the shooter was — were they allowed to carry a weapon? Ohio has some laws around the ability to not have to retreat and some things like that. There are some challenges, prosecution-wise for a case like this.”
Malik said that, thanks to the department’s partnership with the ATF and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, every piece of physical evidence, including shell casings, has been “tested to be traced. Every gun has been swabbed for DNA evidence. We’re not releasing all the results of today, that’s part of an active investigation, but we remain very closely focused on how data that we pull from evidence in the field can be used with our partners to try to link cases together, to try to provide further leads.”
Harding said the APD’s detectives have spent more than 2,500 hours combined working on the case, interviewing more than 100 people and collecting “dozens” of pieces of physical evidence. In addition to the ATF and Ohio BCI, the FBI, U.S. Marshals, and the Summit County Sheriff’s Office are all involved.
Fund for victims and their families continues to grow — more than $46K distributed so far
Tracy Carter, the system director of government relations and health policy at Summa Health, one of three advisory chairs for the Gun Violence Response Fund, announced it has pledges of $264,455, with more than $46,000 distributed so far by the Victim Assistance Program.
Carter, who co-chairs the fund along with Ron Paydo, the Akron/Canton market president for Huntington Bank, and Rev. Charles Myricks, the senior pastor at Arlington Church of God, said they are still accepting “donations large and small,” at akroncf.org/gunviolenceresponsefund.
Victims needing support can call the Victim Assistance Program 24/7 at 330-376-0040.
Leanne Graham, the president and CEO of Akron’s Victim Assistance Program, along with Malik and Akron Community Foundation Vice President John Garofalo, announced the creation of the fund on June 10.
ACF, the United Way of Summit & Medina and Akron City Council, co-sponsored by Ward 5 Council Member Johnnie Hannah, all contributed to the fund.
