Posted: 8/3/2005 7:11:41 AM EDT
[#13]
Officer who stopped robbery had recently returned to duty
Wednesday, August 3, 2005 By Lori Monsewicz Repository staff writer CANTON — The policeman who shot a suspect during a foiled bank robbery try Monday is the same officer fired last year amid claims he lied about a bar fight.
Officer Greg Gilmore had been back on the job only about two months when investigators say he confronted two men planning to rob the National City Bank branch at 3409 Cleveland Ave. NW.
The suspect Gilmore shot — Daniel J. Ivery, 26, of Akron — remained hospitalized with injuries that police said were not life-threatening. Ivery is at Aultman Hospital. His condition was not available Tuesday afternoon.
A second suspect got away by hijacking a car and is being sought, said Chief Dean McKimm.
Gilmore, a five-year veteran, was off-duty, working as bank security when police said two men wearing masks started coming toward the bank.
“He had the presence of mind to be monitoring the radio traffic, and he heard a call go out in reference to a stolen van,” McKimm said.
“He spotted the van coming up Cleveland Avenue while he was in the bank, and he noticed it turned off into the bank parking lot. That’s when he went out back to investigate and confronted the would-be robbers coming out of the stolen vehicle.”
The minivan was stolen from a 19-year-old woman at a nearby cemetery, McKimm said.
According to police, two men with masks climbed out of the van and walked toward the bank’s rear entrance. When Gilmore confronted them, one ran. The other man refused an order to get down and began fumbling for something, at which time he was shot twice. One bullet hit him in the abdomen, police said.
McKimm said Tuesday that Gilmore fired five times. One shot knocked a gun from the suspect’s hand, police have said.
“If the other guys got a shot off, we don’t know yet,” he said.
Police continued to look Tuesday for the man who got away.
“I’m very hopeful that the investigation is going to lead to the identity of the second suspect in quick order,” McKimm said.
An aggravated robbery charge was filed Monday against Ivery, court records show.
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Web site shows Ivery was released from the Warren Correctional Institution in November. He had been in prison since August 1996 for felonious assault and aggravated robbery in Summit County.
Gilmore won back his job late in May when an arbitrator said the city lacked proof for firing him. The city had to pay him $50,000 in back pay, plus benefits, without loss of seniority.
Gilmore has been put on paid administrative leave for three days as the investigators and detectives probe Monday’s shooting. That is city policy when deadly force is used and someone is injured, the chief said.
“We anticipate his return on Thursday,” McKimm said.
Gilmore was fired last year after an Internal Affairs investigation of a Dec. 19, 2003, fight at Bocassio’s Sports Bar, 2535 Fulton Rd. NW, involving Officer Anthony Jackson and a drunken patron.
A cruiser videotape shows Gilmore following Jackson from the bar after the fight. Investigators believed Jackson then assaulted the handcuffed man in a police cruiser.
Gilmore, who is seen following Jackson from the bar by only seconds, told investigators he never saw an assault. The city accused him of violating the department’s truthfulness rule and fired him in July 2004.
An arbitrator believed Gilmore’s explanation, that he had instead headed off to find their supervisor in hopes of preventing the assault.
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