Police: Officers shoot armed man after I-75 crash in Ohio

MORAINE, Ohio (AP) — A man was shot by police officers and later died after authorities allege he pointed a gun at the officers following a crash on an interstate in Ohio, authorities said.

Moraine police and fire crews responded shortly before 6 a.m. Wednesday to an accident in the northbound lanes of I-75 and found one vehicle flipped over and another in a ditch, police said. A man in the overturned vehicle was found to be armed with a .44 caliber revolver and he pointed it at the officers, police said

Chief Craig Richardson of the Moraine police department said the officers tried to talk to the man and de-escalate the situation for about five minutes, giving the man a total of 41 commands to put the gun down, but he did not comply. At one point, officers saw him cock the hammer on the gun, Richardson said.

Police said both officers eventually fired a total of nine shots, and 27-year-old Elijah Isham was pronounced dead at a local hospital. The cause and manner of death are being investigated by the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office. Police said investigations into the events and the original crash are ongoing.

“This went from a simple crash to a deadly force situation very quickly,” Richardson said. He said it appeared the suspect’s car was going at significant speed when it rear-ended the other vehicle, but the cause of the crash and the suspect’s intentions or motives are both unclear.

The suspect, who had an Oregon driver’s license and was driving a car with Oregon plates, had a recent second-degree felony arrest in Colorado and was named in an active protection-from-abuse order, Richardson said.