Man killed by Kettering police was shot in chest, coroner says
A man killed by Kettering Police Sunday night was shot in the chest, according to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office.
James Tober Sr.’s death was ruled a homicide by the coroner’s office Tuesday. The office said his cause of death was the gunshot to the chest.
Officers were called to the 2100 block of Gay Drive about 10 p.m. Sunday by the woman who said 68-yearold Tober, a white man, was yelling at her while possibly having some sort of mental health episode. The woman told dispatchers that she was hiding and needed help.
“I told him that if he didn’t stop yelling at me I was going to call the police ... and he went and got the gun and he said, ‘I’ll be waiting for them,’” the woman said in the 911 call.
When officers arrived, Kettering Police Chief Christopher Protsman said they found Tober with a gun in the road and the man ignored orders to drop his weapon. Officers and Tober exchanged gunfire.
Protsman said his department is performing two separate investigations — one criminal and one internal — to determine whether the shooting was justified. Officers can be heard on cruiser dash camera video telling a man to put down his weapon before gunshots are heard.
Tober had a handgun during the incident, Protsman said, but the chief declined to give specifics about the type of gun.
The chief said so far the evidence indicates to him that the officers acted properly. Kettering Police didn’t release any new information Tuesday or respond to public records requests from the Dayton Daily News.
The Gay Drive shooting is the first officer-involved one in Kettering since June 2018. Before then, the department had three separate officer-involved shootings between August 2017 and the one in June 2018.
The officers involved in all of those shootings were cleared by the grand jury and did not face charges. Kettering Police said the officers did not face disciplinary action.
A review of a background check shows Tober had little criminal history. He was cited multiple times in minor traffic-related incidents including speed and following too close, a background check says, but the newspaper was unable to find any violent criminal history.