Years after being shot, victim might get justice

On a September night in 2005, Diona Clark burst out of her North Side apartment in a mad dash to escape an abusive ex-boyfriend.

She didn’t get far. The man, identified by police as Larry C. Belcher, gave chase, caught her in a bear hug and dragged her back inside. Then he blocked the door and put a gun to his head.

“He’s telling me he doesn’t want to live,” Clark, now 39, recalled. “I’m thinking, ‘Tonight, I’m going to die.’”

She made another try for the door. Gunfire stopped her.

“I can hear the blood coming out of me, as if someone was pouring water from a gallon jug,” she said.

Clark, then 27, had been shot in her chest and wrist. She later learned that Belcher had shot himself and was critically injured. But Columbus police didn’t charge him then because they didn’t expect him to survive.

Belcher would be

permanently disabled, but he would survive. And until Friday, he had avoided any charges in connection with the attack on Clark.

Like many crime victims, Clark didn’t know much about the criminal justice system back then. When the police didn’t contact her anymore, she assumed they had a reason.

“I was totally ignorant to it,” she said.

That changed as she began to advocate on behalf of domestic-violence victims. Earlier this year, she started asking questions about her own case and why nothing had come of it.

On Friday — after several months of inquiries by her and a state representative

advocating on her behalf — Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien’s office secured a one-count kidnapping indictment against Belcher, who is 44 and lives on the Northeast Side. The statute of limitations for other potential charges had run out.

The indictment is a start, but Clark remains frustrated.

“You literally just put my case in a drawer and let it collect dust,” she said. “To me it’s just like you don’t care. He’s my assailant, he committed a crime, and nothing was done.”

She said in one meeting this year, Deputy Chief Richard Bash apologized for the division’s original blunder but said there was no path forward for her. Clark now questions whether he deliberately misled her to close the case quietly. She said it was state Rep. Bernadine

Kennedy Kent, D-Columbus, who pointed out the 20-year statute for kidnapping hadn’t expired.

Kennedy Kent, a former school administrator and child advocate, was elected last year. She and her husband, James Whitaker, were credited six years ago for being the whistleblowers who uncovered widespread fraud in a federally funded tutoring program.

Kennedy Kent said the mishandling of Clark’s case reminds her of another Columbus police case from 2013, in which she and Whitaker reported that children they knew were being sexually and physically abused and that the mother was ignoring the abuse.

Kennedy Kent kept after police for years, alleging that they were not acting on the complaints partly because the division had deemed her a “chronic complainer.” It wasn’t until late 2015 that the children were removed from the home and the man arrested on unrelated warrants.

The city washed its hands of the matter in 2016, and police spokeswoman Denise Alex-Bouzounis on Friday pointed to a letter to Kennedy Kent from O’Brien this spring, in which he said her allegations had been investigated and that police had not been derelict in their duties. The allegation raised by Clark that Bash lied about the viability of the case against Belcher has been referred to Internal Affairs, Alex-Bouzounis said.

Kennedy Kent said Chief Kim Jacobs has been uncooperative and obstructionist and must be held accountable. She said the child sexual assault investigation and

Belcher’s case point to a systemic problem of ignoring or mishandling complaints raised by black citizens.

She and Clark said they are not anti-police. Clark praised Officer Anthony Roberts, who picked up the Belcher investigation this year and amassed the evidence to charge him.

“He’s told me that he’s here for me and that it’s wrong, what took place,” Clark said. “I often wonder how many other victims out in the community have experienced this.”

“Diona is an untainted victim,” Kennedy Kent said. “Those children are untainted victims. I have seen this over and over and over again with black victims, and I’m sick and tired of it.”