'Rammed his way out:' Body camera video, 911 calls show robberies that came before I-70 shootout
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- At least two police officers aimed guns at accused armed robbery suspects in a bank parking lot Thursday before the suspects drove off in a stolen Porsche and later exchanged gunfire with police on Interstate 70.
Body camera footage, as well as 911 calls, released by the Whitehall Division of Police on Friday began to piece together the scene of the series of crimes that preceded a shootout between the officers and armed suspects, leaving an officer injured and a suspect dead.
One man told an emergency dispatcher he was calling them from inside of his office, as another person was calling them from outside, according to an audio recording of the 911 call. A man inside the Porsche dealership’s showroom on the 400 block of N. Hamilton Road, he said, was demanding keys to a car.
“I got a guy trying to rob us,” the other man told a different dispatcher from the parking lot of the Porsche dealership at nearly the same time. “He’s in there, pointing a gun at people, trying to get keys.”
About 30 seconds later, that caller then described the suspect running out front, climbing into a black Porsche Cayenne, and speeding off, as at least one other person in the background can be heard shouting.
“Just let him go. Let him go. There he goes,” the caller told the person in the background.
The suspects are accused of driving the Porsche from the dealership, located in Whitehall, close to 20 miles away on the other side of the city -- where they robbed a Fifth Third Bank on the far west side of Columbus at the 2400 block of Hilliard Rome Rd.
Quick bits of body camera footage from the Fifth Third parking lot showed police officers attempting to block the Porsche in the bank’s drive-through. Two officers stood outside of their vehicles, held guns, and shouted. But as the third officer puts his vehicle in reverse, the suspects manage to squeeze out and drove off.
“Well, he rammed his way out, he’s going toward Hilliard Rome,” one officer said.
One day later, a Columbus police officer remains hospitalized, one suspect is dead and one is in custody in connection with the incident -- but investigators believe at least one suspect is still at large.