WINDHAM TOWNSHIP, Ohio (WJW) — The shooting death of an armed woman by police in Portage County is the focus of an investigation by agents with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
The Portage County Sheriff’s Office says it started with a volatile situation that began to unfold at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, when an ongoing dispute between neighbors along Werger Road in Windham Township boiled over.
Township residents say 66-year-old Cora Baughman went to her neighbor’s home to discuss a sewage drainage issue that they had been arguing about for months. Investigators say a sheriff’s deputy and a police officer from neighboring Garrettsville responded to a 911 call about the dispute, and while enroute, they learned that Baughman was armed with a gun.
Neighbors say when officers arrived, they ordered Baughman to drop the gun, and while authorities have not revealed the exact details of what happened next, Baughman was shot multiple times. She was later pronounced dead at the UH Portage Medical Center.
“Absolutely cannot fathom it, it’s just mind blowing, no words,” said a distressed neighbor, who asked that she not be identified.
The Windham Township resident says she cannot understand why Baughman decided to arm herself when she went to her neighbor’s home, and she believes Baughman left the police with few options.
“If the person is advancing and will not drop a weapon, their choices are very limited to keep themselves and everybody else in the area safe,” she said.
We are told that neighbors had been concerned about how the dispute between Baughman and her neighbors had escalated into a feud over a period of time. The township resident who spoke with FOX 8 says she is convinced that Baughman would be alive, if she sought a peaceful resolution to the issues she had been having with her neighbors.
“In my mind, a dispute, if you can’t settle it, go to small claims court, you don’t pull out guns, but that’s just me,” she said. “We moved here specifically because it’s out in the country, it’s quiet, there never seems to be much of anything going on here, so this really stunned us.”