Staff file photo / Ed Runyan At trial, Boardman police officer Evan Beil described how Damian Cessna charged at him with this knife during a 2021 confrontation on South Avenue in Boardman. Staff file photo / Ed Runyan ...

BOARDMAN — An investigation by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation into the July 13, 2021, officer-involved shooting of Damian Cessna by Boardman police officer Evan Beil showed that Cessna had been arguing with a former friend the day before the officer encountered Cessna at 12:40 a.m. on a bicycle with a baseball bat and knives.

It caused Beil to speculate at Cessna’s recent sentencing hearing that the argument caused Cessna to travel to the ex-friend’s house that night to do him harm. Beil said he thinks when he pulled Cessna over he “interrupted Mr. Cessna’s mission that night,” and it could have cost Beil his life.

Special Agent Matthew Armstrong, lead BCI investigator on the case, provided a 64-page report to then-Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul Gains on Oct. 1, 2021, that summarized the investigation carried out on the confrontation, including events leading up to the shooting, the crime-scene investigation and interviews with Cessna, then 24; Beil; Cessna’s mother; and others.

It was not Armstrong’s role to tell authorities whether he thought Beil’s actions were justified in shooting at Cessna 11 times during a confrontation on South Avenue near Mathews Road in Boardman, Armstrong’s report states.

The report’s purpose instead was to provide, “to the extent possible, the facts and circumstances surrounding this incident. As unbiased collectors of fact, the investigative team has not and will not render any opinion of the legality of the officers’ actions. Instead, it is anticipated that this investigation will provide the basis of information for a decision to be rendered by the appropriate authorities.”

The episode began with Beil seeing Cessna on the roadway at night with no lights on his bicycle, riding in the wrong lane of travel while holding a baseball bat. Beil would later learn Cessna was armed with knives, including a large one.

Beil testified at Cessna’s two trials that he made a traffic stop on Cessna, whom he did not know, to warn him that his actions on the bicycle were dangerous. Beil said he first asked Cessna to put down the baseball bat, which Cessna did.

But when Beil asked Cessna to take a long knife from its sheath on Cessna’s belt and toss it away, Cessna said, “I will not disarm myself. I do not feel safe talking to you,” Beil testified.

Beil told Cessna to get rid of the knife or Cessna would be arrested, Beil testified. “And then I draw my firearm, order him to the ground,” Beil said. “At that point, he pulls the knife out of its sheath. He makes a grunting noise and charges at me,” Beil testified.

Beil said Cessna held the knife about head level with his elbow bent as he came toward Beil. Cessna said he fired until Cessna collapsed forward onto the ground. Beil fired about five times, then paused, then fired about six more times until Cessna fell to the ground, Beil said.

Trial testimony tried to pin down the distance between the two men. It was suggested they were about 19 feet apart when the conversation started and about 16 feet apart when Cessna was struck by the bullets. But there also were suggestions that Beil may have been backing up from his starting point, affecting the distance.

MAHONING PROSECUTORS

In late December 2021, Gains said his office had reviewed the BCI investigation and concluded that the prosecutor’s office was not going to take any action against Beil, stating, “The officer was cleared of any wrongdoing. That was our conclusion,” he said.

Boardman Police Chief Todd Werth told The Vindicator that he placed Beil on paid administrative leave at the time of the shooting, per policy, but placed Beil back on active duty July 26, 2021, after an internal review by the Boardman Police Department found that Beil’s actions were appropriate. The BCI investigation was still ongoing at the time.

TRIALS

Cessna went on trial twice. At his first trial last September, a jury found him guilty of a low-level felony of obstructing official business and misdemeanor aggravated menacing but could not decide on felonious assault. He was tried again last month on felonious assault and was convicted. Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Maureen Sweeney sentenced Cessna to four to six years in prison on June 11.

DAY-BEFORE DISPUTE

BCI interviews conducted with Cessna’s mother, Jill Mays, and two friends of Cessna all described a dispute involving Cessna that erupted the day before the shooting.

Mays told Armstrong that her son lived by himself in an apartment on West Boulevard in Boardman and she had spoken with him about 3:30 p.m. July 12, 2021. He told her he was upset about an argument he had via text messages, so he “‘blocked’ his friend’s number due to the argument. He did not tell her what the argument was about,” the summary report of the BCI report states.

Mays said her son “has mental health issues and is on disability because of it. She explained, ‘He’s very, I guess you would say aggressive,’ and has a ‘short fuse.'” Mays said she was “not certain if he was ever ‘officially’ diagnosed with schizophrenia, but she has heard it mentioned in the past by medical professionals.” Cessna was getting counseling at Valley Counseling Services in Youngstown at the time, she said.

Mays said her son was prescribed medications for his mental health, but she did not know if he actually took the medication. She said her son was “‘upset all the time’ and that ‘It’s just kind of the way he is.'” She mentioned that her son went to the apartment of her boyfriend, Jose Johnson, in January or February 2021 and got into an altercation with Johnson.

She said her son “pulled out a knife, but he didn’t go up to him.” She estimated her son, then 24, had the mentality of a person of about 15 years old.

When her son pulled out the knife at her boyfriend’s apartment, she was able to calm him down, and the police were not contacted, she said. Mays said her son told her the July 12, 2021, argument was with a friend named “Ed” who lived on Meadowbrook Avenue in Boardman. She said Ed was about the same age as her son, and his home was not far from the intersection where her son was shot.

Mays said her son routinely carried “a lot of knives with him” and had done that for a “long, long time.” She said her son did not have a driver’s license and did not drive. “He either walks or rides a bicycle,” she said.

The investigator spoke with the friend Cessna had argued with on July 12, 2021. His name is Edward Salus, whose father also was present during the interview. Salus “lived in the area where the officer-involved shooting occurred,” the Armstrong report states.

Salus said he last spoke with Cessna on July 12, 2021, about 1:40 p.m. “He and his girlfriend, Marisela Barrera, were on a group video call with Cessna. During the call, Cessna became upset after a comment was made about a logo on (Cessna’s) shirt. Cessna misunderstood the comment and thought they were implying he had been in a mental hospital,” the report states.

“Salus ended up hanging up on Cessna,” Salus told BCI. Cessna did not contact Salus or his girlfriend after the argument, the report states.

Cessna dated Barrera for about a week in June 2020, the report states. Salus began dating Barrera on July 21, 2020. Salus and Cessna stopped being friends when E.J. Salus began dating Barrera, the report states. Near the end of 2020, Cessna told Barrera he was going to beat up Salas and afterward said he was going to go to Texas, where Barrera lived, to beat her up, the report states. She was 21 at the time.

Salus said he played Xbox with Cessna, and they primarily communicated over Xbox Live. Salus said, “Cessna believed he was immortal and said he had been shot in the past and nothing happened to him.”

The Salus section of the report stated that “Cessna never said anything bad about the police, but he did talk about pulling knives on people all the time.” Salus told the investigator he and Cessna were friends because they both had disabilities and attended school together.

Salus said he and Cessna “were good friends until (Salus) started dating Cessna’s ex-girlfriend, Barrera.” Salus “wondered if Cessna was coming to (Salus’) home the night of the shooting,” the summary report states.

When Barrera was interviewed by BCI, she told the investigator she had never met Cessna in person, but Cessna “did not take his medication.”

DEATH THREATS

Barrera said Cessna gets “heated especially when people try to correct him,” the report states. The statements attributed to Barrera included that “He always talked about how he cannot die.” She said Cessna had threatened to kill her and E.J. Salus in the past.”

She said on July 12, 2021, the day before Cessna was shot, she and Salus were in a group call with Cessna, and she “asked Cessna if he would help (Salus) find some friends. During the call, she asked if Cessna had been in a psych ward because he was wearing a shirt with a logo that read psych ward and had a number on it. Cessna misunderstood her statement and thought she was saying he should be in a psych ward,” the report states. Cessna left the call, she said.

Barrera said she tried to check on Cessna later that day, July 12, 2021, but he blocked her on his phone. She communicated with him on Facebook Messenger later that day, and he “said he had a highest power,” and he was giving Barrera “your last warning” and that “Something really bad will happen to Ed if you don’t stop.”

DID NOT TESTIFY

Neither Salus nor Barrera were called to testify at Cessna’s trials. But Beil discussed the disagreement extensively in his remarks at Cessna’s sentencing hearing June 11.

Beil called Salus Cessna’s “romantic rival” and said Cessna armed himself with his “favorite knife,” a baseball bat and steel knuckles “to confront (Salus) about stealing his girlfriend.”

Beil said Cessna “falsely claimed he was on his way home” and that Beil “interrupted Mr. Cessna’s mission that night. It immediately escalated into an act of violence, not an act of violence by me but an act of violence by Mr. Cessna.”

Beil said the interaction with Cessna is the only time he ever discharged his weapon in more than 10 years as a police officer.

Armstrong seemed to confirm this theory when he testified at Cessna’s second trial, saying that when he interviewed Cessna after the confrontation, Cessna said “he was going to a friend’s house to scare a friend of his who had started dating or entered into a romantic relationship with his girlfriend.”

BALLISTICS

Trial testimony never established how many times Cessna was hit by the gunfire, but the BCI summary suggests it was about four or five times, stating that Cessna had gunshot wounds in his “upper right quadrant, sternum, left nipple, left flank (side) and right wrist.”

The report also contains a photograph of Beil’s cruiser taken after the shooting, marking the location of the 11 bullet shell casings from the 11 shots Beil fired. Armstrong testified in the second trial in May that the bullet shell casings from a gun like Beil’s typically eject to the back and to the right of the gun when fired.

Five of 11 casings were located behind Beil’s cruiser. One was near a rear tire, two more were to the left side of Beil’s cruiser. Three more were on the roof of the cruiser.

Armstrong testified at the second trial that the location of the shell casings ejected from Beil’s gun, as depicted on a photograph of Beil’s cruiser and evidence markers corroborated Beil’s “version of events.”

Armstrong said Cessna told him he recalled “walking or moving toward the officer, and he remembered his arm moving, and he didn’t know what happened. And then he realized his hand had been shot. And then he continued moving and then he was shot again in the chest, and he collapsed,” Armstrong said. Cessna said he remembered having the knife in his hand at the time, Armstrong testified.