Twenty-three year old man shot dead by police in a marijuana raid

EATON | Preble County law-enforcement officials declined to talk publicly Monday as they turned information about Friday's fatal shooting by a police officer of a 23-year-old man over to detectives from the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office.

Montgomery County investigators, called in by Preble County Sheriff Tom Hayes, also said they would not talk about their review of the shooting by a member of a Preble County's emergency services group — officers from a number of police departments who are trained to handle drownings and hostage and other situations.

However, it was anything but quiet outside the Preble County Courthouse, where dozens of friends and relatives picketed and said that police were covering up what happened to Clayton Jacob Helriggle, 23, of 1282 Ohio 503 South.

The protesters disputed police claims that Helriggle had a gun when he descended a stairwell and was shot by a Lewisburg police officer, whose identity has not been released. Friends and relatives on Monday carried blue plastic cups similar to the one they said Helriggle had in his hand Friday night.

Among the protesters were four of Helriggle's roommates, three of whom said they were inside the brick farmhouse when police stormed the house to serve a warrant to search for narcotics.

Maj. Wayne Simpson of the Preble County Sheriff's Office declined to discuss information about what happened Friday night and said a report on the shooting of the Preble County man had not been completed. Preble County Prosecutor Rebecca Ferguson said she sealed the search warrant after the shooting, and had no comment regarding the investigation.

"They're a professional group of officers, that's what their job is, and I'm not going to second-guess them. Whatever (Montgomery County officials) come up with, they come up with," Ferguson said.

Friends called Helriggle "peaceful and nonviolent," but police said the 1997 Twin Valley South High School graduate held a 9 mm handgun, not a blue cup, in his right hand when he descended the dimly lighted stairs. Roommates said Helriggle owned a 9 mm gun, but that it was upstairs when police entered their house.

"It's like we were armed, hardened criminals waiting inside to take them on," said Wes Bradley, 26, who lived in the bottom of the six-bedroom farmhouse with his girlfriend, 22-year-old Tasha Webster.

Bradley said he and Webster were near the kitchen next to the stairs, when officers "broke through the back door with battering rams and started throwing in flash grenades three at a time, to blind us."

Another roommate, Ian Albert, said he had returned home from the grocery store with Chris Elmore, 24, who remained outside while Albert ran into the house.

"We saw at least two paddy wagon-type vehicles, like a SWAT bus," Elmore said. "About 30 officers stormed out of the woods" surrounding the farmhouse. "They'd cut the barbed wire, and you could see a staging area, like where 25 to 30 uniformed cops had been lying down and slithered along the grass."

Officers ordered Elmore to get on the ground, and he said he heard three pops, which he said could have been the flash grenades and gunshot.

Inside, Albert said, the police threw him against the staircase, "with my head on the second step up. I wanted to yell at Clay, but I looked up and saw him, rounding the stairway, and he had this look on his face, like, 'What's going on?' and the cops yelled, 'Get down' and then 'boom.' ”

Albert, who completed four months of Navy Seal training, said he reached up for Helriggle, "and I tried to apply pressure," he said, placing his left palm on his right chest, where Helriggle was struck by the gunshot.

"They saw me, drenched in Clay's blood, and they ask me, 'Is he all right?' and I just shook my head. The cops are smoking and joking, high-fiving each other. Wow, I think, they took down a farm of unarmed hippies.

"If they would have come to the door and said, 'Give us your dope, hippies,' we'd have gotten about a $100 ticket."

Police said they confiscated a small amount of marijuana, pills, drug paraphernalia and quantities of packaging items used in the distribution of marijuana.

The four roommates said they smoke marijuana from time to time and that they had marijuana pipes in the house. Bradley said he had a prescription for Fiorocet, a codeinelike painkiller, for a bad knee. They said the packaging police referred to was a box of plastic sandwich bags.

Webster said there was nothing in the house "that a good divorce lawyer couldn't have gotten us out on a misdemeanor," and said an old shotgun and a .22-caliber rifle found there were used for hunting.

"We target-practiced outside all the time, shot at bales of hay, jugs, that sort of thing," Webster said.

Bradley and Webster said Helriggle took a nap around 5 p.m. and had made plans to meet his girlfriend later.

"I'm not sure if he woke up from the bashing on the door or what," Bradley said.

All four said they were not read their rights or told what charges were filed against them. They were released from the Preble County Jail around 1:30 a.m. Saturday. No criminal charges have been filed.

Nancy Fahrenholz, the daughter of Everett "Bill" Fahrenholz, an attorney and former country prosecutor, hugged Bradley on Monday at the courthouse. Helriggle and five roommates rented the house from the Fahrenholzes.

"I'm so sorry," said Fahrenholz, a Rhode Island resident in the area to finish up the estate of her father, Bill Fahrenholz, who died a month ago.

She said Helriggle "was a really nice guy," and that her family was pleased with the five young people's work on rehabilitating the farmhouse.

Helriggle's 77-year-old grandfather, Donald, a Miamisburg resident and Ohio Bell retiree, said his grandson rented the farmhouse "so they could play their instruments, listen to their music and drink a little beer. . . . They just wanted to be doing what 23-year-olds do."

I know, I know. To the fanatics the law doesn't matter, court decisions don't matter, history doesn't matter. It was all a plot by FDR, carried on today by a vast sub silentio conspiracy of all the judges and legislators in the country

Everything you cited would matter if it were cited properly. It wasn't. I've pointed this out to you time and time again, and demonstrated how in fact it's otherwise, but you glance off my arguments, don't answer them directly, and let's be honest---in the end valid counter arguments really don't matter to you one bit. Where the rubber meets the road, your support of the Drug War isn't any more intellectually sound or ideologically conservative than Dane's, A CA Guy's, or Destructor's---you simply hate "druggies" and don't give a rat's ass what happens to them so long as it's something bad.
I'll grant you this: you have the courage of your convictions, no matter how veiled in ridiculous ignorance they are. There's no fool funnier than a sure fool.
As far as prohibition's history's concerned, I'll take Occam's Razor over your uniquely twisted interpretation of the historical record any day of the week, twice on Tuesdays. You are the only person on Planet Earth who subscribes to your ludicrous notion that the 18th was nothing more than political cover---that all the prohibitionary power the feds needed they already had in the Commerce Clause. On another thread, for God's sake, you couldn't even comprehend that the Whiskey Rebellion was a tax issue, not a prohibitionary one. I pity your teachers.
The fringe thing was another poster. Perhaps it was Former Lurker, but in any event it wasn't me.
If nothing else, Roscoe, you're entertaining as all hell.

That may be so; but I don't see Mr. Robinson out campaigning for a rack of doob legally sold at the neighborhood Walmart as a position of candidacy or an answer to our assault on the insidious creepings of drugs into the hands of our young people.

I have a client that I have done in home visits for across town from me about 5 minutes away. He smoked pot for most of his youth and is nearing his mid forties. I can tell the guy something but unless he writes it down, he won't remember it ten minutes later. That's 20 plus years of regular usage. He can't think straight or deeply. If you give him simple math he has to work hard at it. The stuff has destroyed his mind and all he ever did was pot. Many of the conversations we have here would lose him. But that is the legacy of long term use and addiction. And he will continue to get worse and knows it.

I can't say that the war on drugs has been destructive to this nation. I can say that the Drug pushers who war against the law of this land pushing this stuff to our families and killing those that threaten that end are destructive to this country. Like it or not, breaking the law is breaking the law. Whether it's abusing drugs that are a tax on our morals, our nerves, our health and legal system or Violating election laws in Florida and Jersey.
The law is there for the protection of society from things that people pretty universally have seen as wrong and destructive - and inherently so.

People want to argue we should legalize drugs due to the cost of incarceration. Whooptee do. Let's legalize murder.
It just makes some people feel good, relieves their stress.
Wow it ruins their lives to be jailed for it and it's so trivial. I mean it's a rightwing christian view that Murder is wrong anyway and it's so expensive to put someone on death row for all those years or in prison for life. Those dollars could be better spent on treatment so these poeple could get on with their lives. And it's so destructive what the war on murderers in society has done to america and the constitution. I mean isn't the right to choose protected by the constitution. What right do we have to tell someone what choices they can make with their lives?

See, any absurd thing can be pulled through the faulty logic mill and absent any grounded morality begin to sound plausible. That is the problem with morally ungrounded liberal thought. Their morality is subjective to the moment. Tomorrow they'll be suing in federal court for the constitutional right to copulate in the streats before your kids and two days later making sure the litmus test is there in the democrat party to ensure no conservative whackos can prevent it's reversal. Subjectivity. It may sound absurd; but, drug legalization 40 years ago would sound like an idea shipped in from pluto. And where are we now. Our society is bogged in a moralistic morass of poeople who have flipped us off and told us they have a better way while they wreck our lives and make a mockery of the law until everyone sitting on the sidelines doing nothing sits up and says how did this happen. They were too disinterested to do anything while it was brewing and now that the cup is poured they don't want to expend the energy to do anything about it and are worn down enough to go along with it cause they can't win anyway.... BULL. I count, my vote counts and my protest counts and I will not sit by and watch any more of it happen. Nor will I ascent to moral equivelancies over destructive things such as drug use because someone wants to paint me a rosey picture that I've never seen - ever. I've seen the reality and the burnt forest during and after impact - the wasteland that drugs make of peoples lives around me. I have much personal experience around it. Legalizing it is the most dangerous and moronic thing I'd heard. Hearing people put it on a political platform was worse. But seeing conservatives for it.. either they are idiots and uninformed or they're using. But, it ain't anything close to the rosey picture they want to paint.

I ain't buyin into it. When you've held a three year old boy who's parents smoke pot in front of him during the day and snorted cocain in front of them before bed and deal with their issues, you can tell me about how innocent and good for this country drugs might be; but, then if you have any moral grounding a brain and a heart, you couldn't take that position. There's something about sobering reality that makes conservatives out of people who have seen the destructiveness of liberal notions in action.

No, he chooses his battles and he has apparently taken the ever-expanding role of the federal government in fighting the destructive War on (some) Drugs to be less important than defeating democrats at all levels.

I have a client that I have done in home visits for across town from me about 5 minutes away. He smoked pot for most of his youth and is nearing his mid forties. I can tell the guy something but unless he writes it down, he won't remember it ten minutes later. That's 20 plus years of regular usage. He can't think straight or deeply. If you give him simple math he has to work hard at it. The stuff has destroyed his mind and all he ever did was pot. Many of the conversations we have here would lose him. But that is the legacy of long term use and addiction. And he will continue to get worse and knows it.

Fine with me ... live by the doobie, die by the doobie like a stoned cow. I don't think helmet use should be mandated for motorcyclists; let them choose to die if they wish. It sure beats having helmet (or, seatbelt) checkpoints where the Gestapo makes sure you are a good, compliant little subject. Ditto with pot. If you want to destroy your life, more power to you. Did this guy hurt another? Did he commit violence against anyone? The jackbooted thugs kill people, including innocent ones. But you consider this harm less than that of drugs, for some reason.

I can't say that the war on drugs has been destructive to this nation. I can say that the Drug pushers who war against the law of this land pushing this stuff to our families and killing those that threaten that end are destructive to this country.

The same could be said of alcohol during the Prohibition. You never did answer whether you thought the Prohibition-era murders were the responsibility of alcohol, or of its prohibition.

Like it or not, breaking the law is breaking the law. Whether it's abusing drugs that are a tax on our morals, our nerves, our health and legal system or Violating election laws in Florida and Jersey. The law is there for the protection of society from things that people pretty universally have seen as wrong and destructive - and inherently so.

And the supreme law of the land is the Constitution. There is no BATF, no DEA, no authorization to ban leafy substances, no War on (some) Drugs in that document. The laws that prohibit pot are illegal. Note that it took a Constitutional Amendment to ban alcohol. Why none such for pot? The current drugs laws are based on the most absurd hyperextension of the "interstate commerce" clause, as if some guy growing weed in his own house is somehow engaging in interstate commerce and can therefore be regulated by Congress.

People want to argue we should legalize drugs due to the cost of incarceration. Whooptee do. Let's legalize murder.

Not me, those costs are merely insult to injury. And by the way murder has identifiable victims. Pot smoking only harms those who do it, if at all.

I count, my vote counts and my protest counts and I will not sit by and watch any more of it happen. Nor will I ascent to moral equivelancies over destructive things such as drug use because someone wants to paint me a rosey picture that I've never seen - ever.

I didn't say it was rosy - I only said people should be held responsible for their own choices.

Legalizing it is the most dangerous and moronic thing I'd heard.

How would you know? It's never been legalized, so you really can't say what effect it would have. Again, you decline to answer the question about murders during the Prohibtion.

When you've held a three year old boy who's parents smoke pot in front of him during the day and snorted cocain in front of them before bed and deal with their issues, you can tell me about how innocent and good for this country drugs might be; but, then if you have any moral grounding a brain and a heart, you couldn't take that position.

And I don't take that position. Drugs may well be injurious, just like smoking or skydiving or rafting. People die. People get injured. Families are shattered - or wiped out. But that's no reason to empower the government to intrude into people's lives, people's noses, and people's urine to see that they are good subjects. (Will you please piss in a cup for me? It's for the children.)

There's something about sobering reality that makes conservatives out of people who have seen the destructiveness of liberal notions in action.

Ever see the blood of some innocent person, spattered all over the bed where he was sleeping? Where the jackbooted thugs gunned him down where he lay because they were at the wrong address and thought they saw him with a gun? I suppose not. Ishmael Mena. Donald Scott. Anthony Sepulveda (age: 11 yrs). Murdered in their own homes by drug warriors.. Do a web search on these names, and see if it might not be time to give peace a chance in this war of yours. Separately from these killings, we now have civil asset forfeiture, drug-sniffing dogs at airports and other public places, piss tests at companies, mandatory minimum sentences that lock up non-violent drug offenders, and that causes the release of violent murderers and rapists to make room for them. Our bankers now are required to snitch on us for "suspicious" transactions. Families are broken up when the parents are hauled off to jail, sending the kids to horrible foster homes. We have D.A.R.E., a deceitful government program that exposes children to drugs and drug paraphenalia in government schools, and which encourages them to snitch on their own parents for drug use. Furthermore, we have the violence thanks to the prohibition, that the democrats are turning into the War On Guns - inner cities are so violent it must be the "assault weapons" and the "Ni**ertown Saturday Night Specials" and the "high capacity magazines" with the "gun show 'loophole'" that all need to be banned or closed, in order to save us from this "gun violence."

The War On Freedom has many tenticles and many faces. You do not accomplish what you think by supporting "just one" aspect of this war: Someday YOU might find yourself being no-knocked, because YOU own a gun that was banned as part of some drug war violence "reduction" program. Recall that the National Firearms Act of 1934 was enacted to give out-of-work revenue agents something to do during the depression, while the memory of alcohol-related gangster violence was still fresh in everyone's mind.

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