A Sheriff’s deputy who shot an Ohio photojournalist says he mistook his camera and tripod for a gun. Jake Shaw fired without warning, reports the New Carlisle News, seriously injuring Andy Grimm, who underwent surgery and is expected to recover.
There was a traffic stop on Main Street near Studebaker’s Restaurant involved, but Andy was not the subject of the stop. …
“I was going out to take pictures and I saw the traffic stop and I thought, ‘hey, cool. I’ll get some pictures here.'” He said he pulled into Studebaker’s parking lot in full view of the deputy, got out of his Jeep in full view of the deputy and started setting up his tripod and camera. “I turned around toward the cars and then ‘pop, pop,'”
Andy said the deputy gave him no warning. “I was just doing my job,” he said.
The Washington Post reports that Clark County Sheriff Deborah Burchett has nothing to say, at least not to outside press (she reportedly spoke with the Grimms, who run the local paper).
Her office is referring all questions to the state attorney general’s Bureau of Criminal Division, which is investigating the shooting.
A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office was not immediately available for comment Tuesday morning. It also remains unclear if Shaw has been placed on administrative leave, which is standard procedure in officer-involved shootings, or if he will face disciplinary actions.
It sounds like a small close-knit community and they’re all going to smooth it out. They may not have a “mean mouth” for their deputy, but at least the rest of the world knows that New Carlisle has a crazy guy with a badge who doesn’t know a Canon from a Colt and pops off at the first lick of fear.
UPDATE: It turns out the newspaper proprietors, all but apologizing to the cops for getting in the way of their bullets, are the same Grimms who refused to publish articles about LGBT people.