By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Four Cincinnati police officers failed to find a gun a teenager hid in his pants, leaving it possible for him - despite being handcuffed in the back seat of a police cruiser - to wiggle the gun out and shoot a bystander.

Police say this gun was used in the shooting. (Photo from Cincinnati Police)

The officers should have found the gun, Chief Tom Streicher said Monday, and their failure to do so delivered a potentially fatal lesson that should reverberate throughout the department.

"There was simply not a good enough search done - period," the chief said, adding that one of the most dangerous things a police officer can do is become complacent.

All the officers could be disciplined, but Streicher said he didn't expect any punishment to be severe. They will be counseled, he said, for their failure to feel the gun and holster hidden in the teenager's baggy pants between his leg and groin, and be reminded that every officer is supposed to search his or her prisoner even if someone else already did.

The incident Saturday in South Fairmount brought together a rookie female officer, a homeless 17-year-old suspect with a history of delinquency, and a woman living nearby in a halfway house for substance abusers.

It was the second time in three weeks that a Cincinnati officer exchanged gunfire with someone, and the third in a month that a Cincinnati officer fired at a suspect. Streicher, in a news conference Monday afternoon, said the teenager told police "flat-out that his intention was to kill that police officer."

Now the officer's on paid leave, the teen's in juvenile detention facing possible trial as an adult, and the female bystander hit by one of the teen's shots is recovering from a graze wound on her left shoulder.

Officer Katrina Neal, on patrol since August but working alone only a few months, will be on leave for a week. The bystander, Rhonda Shaw, 34, was treated at University Hospital on Saturday and then again Sunday for what City Manager Valerie Lemmie called undisclosed complications.

Neal, 23, was taking the 17-year-old to juvenile detention at the time of the shooting about 5:30 p.m. at Queen City and Harrison avenues. He'd been accused of stealing a money order from a woman at Fischer Place and Wunder Avenue in Westwood.

The teenager appeared in Juvenile Court on Monday. He faces charges of aggravated robbery with a firearm, carrying a concealed weapon, escape, attempted escape and obstruction of official business. Police said they filed charges of attempted murder, but those were not heard Monday.

The teenager also had two outstanding warrants for violating previous Juvenile Court orders, one of which accused him of running away from the Stay Center, where he had been placed in July. Records were not available on what caused him to be placed at the center, a group home for juveniles on probation.

He'll be back in court March 18 for a hearing that starts the process of deciding whether he'll be tried as an adult.

The suspect has had previous run-ins with the law.

He'd been taken into the custody of the Hamilton County Department of Job and Family Services in 2002 for reasons of delinquency and dependency, said Laurie Petrie, department spokeswoman. The latter means that, for whatever reason, his parents were not able to take care of him.

But he was so uncooperative with his social worker that the Hamilton County Department of Job and Family Services received court approval in October to terminate him from its custody.

The department gives custody to someone else in those cases, she said, but she couldn't disclose who that was. Police paperwork lists a guardian, but the teenager told police he'd been living on the streets for the past seven months.

"Obviously, that type of lifestyle has taken its toll on him," Streicher said.

Police say the teen carried a Raven Arms .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol - one of the most frequently confiscated guns nationally, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Streicher demonstrated that the 17-year-old - even though his hands were behind his back in standard metal cuffs - was able to twist himself around and grab the weapon. Detainees, particularly young, thin ones, can sometimes do that, the chief said.

The 5-inch barrel was pointed at the back of the officer's head.

When the first shot rang out from behind Neal, the officer thought she might have hit something with her cruiser, she told investigators. But she turned around and saw the gun. She put the cruiser in park, opened her door and got out, going around the back of the car and stopping traffic to keep motorists from getting shot, before taking cover in a doorway.

The suspect kept firing, shooting out the left rear window of the cruiser. The glass shattered, spraying Neal and the ground. She fired back once after she made it to the doorway. That bullet went into the cruiser just below the right rear tail light, through the trunk and into the back seat, where it hit the teenager in the right shoulder.

At that point, he screamed that he was shot and wanted to surrender, Streicher said.

Investigators found two dents in the Plexiglas divider between the cruiser's front and back seats. Streicher said the plastic isn't supposed to stop bullets, but it did in this case. Technicians who measured the bullets' trajectories said they would have hit Neal in the base of the right side of her skull.

Christopher Smitherman, who has been critical of police in his three months on City Council, sent Neal a letter of support. If she would have killed the suspect, he said, it would have been justifiable.

"I'm not caught up with whether she patted him down, or someone else patted him down, because he tried to kill her. And she has a right to defend herself," Smitherman said.

"By shooting back, she may have saved someone else's life. She probably deserves a medal."

Other recent shooting incidents

Saturday's exchange of gunfire in South Fairmount was the second time in three weeks that an officer was fired at by a suspect. It was the third time in a month that an officer shot at a suspect. The previous incidents:

• Feb. 19: Officer Patrick Galligan was driving on Liberty Street in the West End when a bullet came through the windshield of his unmarked detective's car, a Dodge Neon. He rolled out and returned fire, hitting suspect Michael White, 21, in the foot. Galligan was not hit. White was charged with attempted murder.

• Feb. 6: Officers Chris Vogelpohl and Colleen Deegan, of the department's undercover drug unit, shot at Jabari Dailey in North Fairmount after they said he picked up a sawed-off shotgun and pointed it at another officer. Dailey was hit in the shoulder. He was indicted on charges of felonious assault, carrying a concealed weapon and being a felon in possession of a gun.

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E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com