What looked like an open-and-shut investigation into a fatal police shooting during a hostage situation in Ohio has been called into question after newly surfaced recordings appeared to show investigators intentionally bury officers’ differing accounts of what happened, according to a WKYC report out Wednesday.
Detectives with the Stark County Sheriff’s Office made the recordings obtained by WKYC while conducting an independent investigation days after Canton SWAT Sgt. Charles Saler fatally shot Shane Ryan in 2013. Ryan, 28, had held a woman hostage at a Great Clips salon in Massillon, Ohio.
Ryan, who suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts in the past, took the woman hostage in the salon’s break room and demanded to see his estranged girlfriend, a salon employee.
On the recordings, Saler told investigators Ryan was not complying with law enforcement requests to release the hostage and he wasn’t sure if Ryan had other weapons.
Earlier in the hostage negotiations, Ryan had turned over his only weapons, a knife and scissors, to police in exchange for cigarettes and a lighter, according to WKYC.
Saler went on to tell investigators that he had no choice but to shoot Ryan after he threatened to blow up the building by igniting a hot water heater with the lighter and vowed to kill the hostage.
Massillon, Ohio police officer Kervin Brown gave a different version of what went down in the salon to investigators, however.
Before recording an interview with Brown, Sheriff’s deputy Lt. Lou Darrow, one of the detectives involved in the independent investigation, can be heard saying, “Nobody is in any trouble, because what happened was a fine thing as far as from a legal standpoint.”
Then Brown told investigators he was already headed out of the building with the hostage when Saler fired on Ryan. Moments later, the investigators asked Brown to leave the room but did not stop the audio recording.
“We have a line of conflict here,” Sgt. Ron Perdue, the other investigator, can be heard saying. “What kind of line of questioning do we want to do here? Because I don’t want to open up a Pandora’s box if we don’t have to.”
Darrow then promised to “gloss over” the discrepancy, which was buried in a 200-page report and never recounted to a grand jury, according to WKYC.
When contacted by the station, Stark County prosecutor John Ferrero said it was the first he’d heard of Brown’s account of the shooting. But Ferrero downplayed the recordings, saying the officer was likely “traumatized and mistaken” by the incident.
An attorney representing Ryan’s family told WKYC the tape was “a game-changer” that shows “a conspiracy unraveling right before your eyes.” He called for a federal and state investigation into the case.
The Ryan family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Saler and the City of Canton.
