Ex-deputy charged with misdemeanor for kicking teen suspect at mall

A former Lucas County sheriff’s deputy who was seen on camera kicking a downed, teenage suspect outside Franklin Park Mall last year has been indicted for misdemeanor assault.

The Lucas County grand jury Tuesday charged David Terry of Rossford with three counts of assault for the incident involving Anthony Wilder, then 17, who he and another officer working security at the mall’s Cinemark movie theaters had chased after observing him carrying a gun.

The grand jury cleared Mr. Terry of second-degree felonious assault, for which it did not find probable cause to charge him.

The deputies had gone to the mall’s Forever 21 store after receiving a report of a menacing situation involving three juveniles, according to a sheriff’s report. Wilder fled to the upper level of the mall’s parking garage, where the deputies closed in on him with Tasers drawn.

After he pulled a handgun from his waistband and was ordered to drop it, he threw the gun on the ground, then resumed flight, after which one of the deputies shot him with the Taser.

It was afterward that Mr. Terry was recorded kicking Wilder in the head. The deputy told investigators that wasn’t his intention, rather that he was trying to kick Wilder’s arms out from under him to prevent him from getting up.

But a sheriff’s office internal-affairs investigation report said Mr. Terry had violated use-of-force policy three other times as well, and that in the Wilder case he also “intentionally steps on the suspect’s left foot/ankle” while Wilder lay on the ground nearly motionless. The sheriff’s office reported firing Mr. Terry in mid-October.

Wilder was taken to a hospital for treatment and then booked into Lucas County juvenile detention on multiple charges. He admitted in Lucas County Juvenile Court on Sept. 22 to delinquency in connection with having weapons while under disability and illegally carrying a concealed weapon and was sentenced to the Division of Youth Services for consecutive six-month terms up to age 21 and is currently detained in southern Ohio.