![]() ![]() One month later, Ritchie shared with his friends a story from the Tea Party News Network about a group of black men assaulting a white couple in Missouri. “Me, racist? The only race I hate is the one you have to run,” it read. The day before he called 911 about Crawford, Ritchie posted a meme on his Facebook page featuring the comedian Gabriel Iglesias. Both have changed their names on social media. ![]() Ritchie and his wife, April, have not spoken publicly since his Guardian interview. In 2010 he was fined $250 and given a year’s probation after being convicted by Miamisburg municipal court of possession of drug paraphernalia. All records of the incident have been expunged by the court and the Huber Heights police department. In January 2012, Ritchie pleaded guilty in the Montgomery County municipal court to theft. He states that the problem was a mix-up in his paperwork. The Guardian disclosed last month that he was thrown out after seven weeks in 2008, after being declared a “fraudulent enlistment”. Ritchie also told several reporters after the shooting that he was an “ex-marine”. “I hope that he’s happy with himself,” her teenage son said of Ritchie in a Facebook post earlier this month. Williams, 37, died of a heart attack in the panic that ensued among customers following the police shooting. The children who Ritchie appeared to claim were under threat from Crawford were in the store with their mother, Angela Williams. ![]() After arriving in a corner of the store, he is seen swinging the rifle at his side and holding it towards a store shelf containing pet products while standing alone and talking on his cellphone for five minutes. ![]() The surveillance footage released on Wednesday shows Crawford passing shoppers with the gun at his side. Ritchie had said of Crawford near the start of his 911 call: “He’s, like, pointing it at people.” He subsequently told the Guardian that “ at no point did shoulder the rifle and point it at somebody”, stressing instead that he had been “waving it around” and that the muzzle moved in the direction of other shoppers. So should he be prosecuted? Yes, I believe so.” Wright said: “He’s basically lying with the dispatchers, he’s making up the story. Michael Wright, the attorney for the Crawford family, said Ritchie “should be questioned on why the footage and what he said does not match”. “If he’s not there, we may not be here,” Piepmeier said of Ritchie at a press conference. One even called back to the dispatcher to check that the 911 caller said Crawford was pointing the rifle at people. Special prosecutor Mark Piepmeier stressed on Wednesday that the responding police officers were led to understand that Crawford was an active threat. He has previously maintained that Crawford posed a threat to shoppers and that the 911 call was justified. Ritchie declined to comment in an online message on Friday. He excited the call, and exaggerated the call, and frankly it was just a bunch of lies.” “He was the catalyst, if you will, in the whole sequence of events leading up to my son’s death,” John Crawford Jr told the Guardian. Knowingly “making false alarms” is a crime under Ohio law punishable by a fine or jail sentence. Surveillance footage and audio recordings released after a grand jury declined to indict the officer who shot Crawford showed that Crawford was holding the rifle at his side and pointing it to the floor at the time when Ritchie alleged that “he just pointed it at, like, two children”.Ĭrawford’s father and the family’s attorney said that Ritchie, 24, should be questioned by police over the discrepancy between the footage and his allegation, which he made about 80 seconds before Crawford was shot, and confirmed when asked soon after. ![]()
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