Woman admitted to fatally shooting off-duty Cleveland police officer during carjacking, prosecutor says

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CLEVELAND, Ohio — The 18-year-old woman charged in connection with the fatal shooting of an off-duty Cleveland police officer during a carjacking admitted to investigators that she shot the officer, a prosecutor said in court.

Assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor Jose Torres said Tamara McLoyd admitted to killing Shane Bartek, 25, during the Friday carjacking. Torres made the statement during McLoyd’s initial appearance on Monday in Cleveland Municipal Court.

Cleveland Municipal Judge Suzan Marie Sweeney set McLoyd’s bond at $5 million on the aggravated murder charge. She also set a $125,000 bond on a separate aggravated robbery charge stemming from a November robbery.

McLoyd is also a suspect in several unsolved armed robberies across the area, according to court records.

The carjacking and shooting happened about 6 p.m. Friday in the parking lot of an apartment complex on Rocky River Drive at Fairway Drive in the city’s Kamm’s neighborhood.

McLoyd “ambushed” Bartek and shot him twice in the back after he tried to fight back, according to police and court records.

McLoyd drove away in Bartek’s car. Surveillance video recorded the shooting, court records say.

At some point McLoyd gave the car to Anthony Butler Jr., Torres said.

Police later spotted Bartek’s stolen car, sparking a high-speed chase involving several suburban police departments. The chase ended when the driver crashed the car into a fence at an apartment complex on East 260th Street and Lakeshore Boulevard in Euclid.

Butler is being held in the Cuyahoga County Jail on $5 million bond on charges of receiving stolen property and fleeing and eluding.

Police found a gun in his car that is believed to be the gun McLoyd used to shoot Bartek.

McLoyd is also charged in the Nov. 2 armed robbery of Happy’s Pizza on Detroit Avenue and West 74th Street in Cleveland.

McLoyd and another person walked into the store about 10:30 p.m. and pointed guns at two employees, according to police and court records. The two robbers forced the two employees into a back room at gunpoint, then stole money from a cash register and the employees’ keys and cellphones.

Investigators tied McLoyd to the robbery via surveillance video and evidence found in her co-defendant’s cellphone, according to court records. Prosecutors issued a warrant for her arrest one week later, but she wasn’t arrested on the warrant until Saturday, according to court records.

McLoyd is on probation stemming from convictions in Lorain County Juvenile Court, and is charged with misdemeanor theft in Berea Municipal Court, according to court records.

Bartek grew up in Middleburg Heights and was hired as a Cleveland officer in 2019. He worked as a patrol officer in the Fifth District in the city’s northeast corner.

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