Cop responding to ‘violent confrontation’ shoots, kills man

COLUMBUS » Authorities said Sunday they were reviewing a suburban Ohio community’s second fatal police shooting in a year’s time after an officer shot and killed a suspect who a 911 caller described attacking a woman as she screamed.

Kettering Police Chief Christopher Protsman said the “violent confrontation” at an apartment in the suburb of Dayton, southwest of Columbus, was reported to police just after 11 p.m. Saturday. He said the officer entered alone and both the suspect and an officer discharged their firearms.

The suspect who died was Mitchell Simmons, 24, of Kettering, the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office said. He died at the scene. The officer was not injured, and his name was not released.

In 911 audio released by the department on its Facebook page , a concerned neighbor describes hearing a man attacking a woman and the woman “crying a lot” and screaming for help.

“There was a woman screaming very loudly. She was screaming ‘Help me! Help me!’” she told a dispatcher. “I can hear her and she kept saying, ‘Get off! Get off! I can’t breathe. You broke my nose. My nose is bleeding and I can’t breathe.’”

Protsman said the responding officer heard a woman in need of help and forced his way into the apartment alone and encountered Simmons with a gun. He said an autopsy of Simmons was planned.

The fatal shooting comes less than nine months after Kettering Officer Jonathon McCoy shot and killed Jason Hoops, 33, of Fairborn, in what began as a traffic stop.