Whitehall man accused of crashing stolen truck, shooting at deputies
Forced closing Canal Winchester schools
A Whitehall man is accused of using a stolen pickup truck to drive doughnut rings into the grass and crash into the bleachers at the Canal Winchester High School softball field, then firing shots at Fairfield County Sheriff ’s deputies before fleeing on foot.
Joseph M. Brown, 20, of Erickson Avenue, was arrested hours later Friday morning after a search by multiple law enforcement agencies located him more than a mile away in a wood line south of Westchester Golf Course.
Brown was charged by the Fairfield County Sheriff’s office with criminal trespassing and a probation violation and booked into the Franklin County jail. He is scheduled to be arraigned Saturday.
Additional charges are expected to be filed against Brown as an investigation by sheriff’s deputies continues.
All Canal Winchester schools were closed for the day Friday as a result of the incident, which dispatchers say began with a call at 5:48 a.m. Friday about a truck driving doughnuts in grass off Dietz Drive at the Canal Winchester High School complex.
When deputies arrived at the scene, they found that a red pickup truck reported stolen out of Columbus had been crashed into a set of bleachers at the high school softball field off Dietz Drive at Connor Avenue, sustaining heavy front-end damage.
While the two deputies were inspecting the pickup and searching for the driver, “they heard what they perceived to be gunshots coming from the area behind them,” the sheriff’s office said in a release late Friday afternoon.
Earlier, the sheriff’s office had reported shots were fired at the deputies. The afternoon press release was not so specific, reporting that “the deputies turned toward the sound and observed a male standing near their parked cruisers. The male then fled the area on foot quickly.”
Fairfield County deputies began a search for the suspect and were assisted by law enforcement personnel from Fairfield County, Franklin County, Columbus, the Ohio Highway Patrol, Lithopolis, Madison Township and Obetz.
Sometime before 10 a.m. — when
the city of Canal Winchester tweeted that law enforcement had a suspect in custody — deputies had located and arrested Brown near the Westchester Golf Course.
But Canal Winchester School District was forced to close all schools for the day, as opposed to just the high school, because there was an active search underway for “an armed and dangerous suspect” about the time students would be preparing to go to school. The search area not only was located near the high school, but included residential subdivisions where students of all grade levels would be walking to bus stops to be taken to schools throughout the district.
In an email, a Canal Winchester district spokesperson wrote that the damage to school property from the truck running across the grass and crashing into the metal bleachers was minimal.
The district’s website and social media posts emphasized that the incident did not involve a student. Brown was, however, a former student of Canal Winchester schools, according to a response to the sheriff’s office release posted on Facebook.
Kelly Payne Best, a teacher at Canal Winchester Middle School, wrote that Brown was a former student of hers and “was always polite and kind.”
Brown “was a good kid and had great potential to be so much more than this,” Best wrote. “I’m heartbroken to read his name in this (sheriff’s release), and so glad he didn’t harm someone this morning . ... I pray he can overcome these demons and return to who he once was.” Mylee@dispatch.com @leem386