A Cincinnati Police Department officer was “legally justified” when they fatally shot 18-year-old Ryan Hinton in May, Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich announced Tuesday.
The officer, who has not been officially identified, won’t face any charges in connection to Hinton’s death. Hinton was running from CPD officers during a stolen car investigation in East Price Hill on May 1 when an officer fired five rounds at Hinton, who was armed. CPD Chief Teresa Theetge said the officer fired because he saw Hinton point a gun at him, but this is difficult to see in the shaky body camera video provided by the department.
Pillich told reporters the officer testified that he fired at Hinton to prevent Hinton from firing at officers.
“I thought, I better get my gun out and shoot him before he shoots me,” Pillich quoted the officer as saying during the investigation. “I fired before he could fire on me.”
Pillich chose not to take the decision to a grand jury, making the decision entirely on her own.
During the press conference, a reporter asked Pillich about her decision to allow CPD to investigate itself and for her office to make the final decision, rather than involving the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations, which is standard among some jurisdictions in the state.
“BCI does not always get involved in things like this,” she said. “They help jurisdictions that don’t have the resources to have a full-fledged investigation, so we can do that on our own.”
Pillich also said the coroner’s preliminary autopsy report does not show that Hinton was shot in the back, saying the bullets entered Hinton “straight from the left side.” Hamilton County Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco revealed Hinton’s preliminary autopsy report on May 19, outlining the location of gunshot wounds on Hinton’s body. When asked to point to the location of one bullet wound, labeled by the department’s pathologist as “right postero-lateral chest, adjacent to the shoulder,” Sammarco instructed reporters to “look it up.”
Online medical resources indicate “postero-lateral chest” refers to the back of the body (posterior) and towards the side (lateral), but the coroner’s office refutes this characterization in an email to CityBeat.
“Your interpretation is incorrect,” Sammarco’s office told CityBeat.
Family reaction
The full autopsy report for Hinton has not yet been released.
During Tuesday’s press conference, Pillich showed photos of Hinton holding weapons in previous social media posts.
The family’s attorney, Fanon Rucker with Cochran Law Firm, criticized this detail as unrelated to the case in a press conference following Pillich’s.
“Why was it relevant to castigate and denigrate this young man?” Rucker said. “Because it had nothing to do with the officer’s decision.”
Rucker said he plans to file a civil suit on behalf of Hinton’s family in the near future.
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This article appears in Jun 11-24, 2025.