Wednesday's special session of the Law and Public Safety committee session to hear the Cincinnati Police Department's investigation into the death of 16-year-old Kyle Plush has been postponed for the time being.
Vice Mayor and committee chair Christopher Smitherman tweeted Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters has served the city with a subpoena directing no video or pictures be released to the public regarding the death of Kyle Plush. So Police Chief Elliot Isaac can't proceed with a 9 a.m. hearing until the prosecutor's office completes its investigation, Smitherman said.
Prosecutor Deters has served the @CityOfCincy w a subpoena directing that no video or pictures be released to the public regarding the death of Kyle Plush. @ChiefEIsaac can not proceed with the 9AM hearing until the prosecutor”s office completes its investigation. @JohnCranley— C. Smitherman (@voteSmitherman) May 2, 2018
Deters told WVXU his office will probably wrap up its investigation by early next week. He said he doesn't know yet if he will take anything to the grand jury to pursue criminal charges, although he said it is unlikely.
"Kyle deserves us looking at everything before we release any findings,'' Deters said. "And we just haven't seen everything."
Eliot was to have released the results of the department's probe into what went wrong in efforts to locate the teenager, who was asphyxiated after being trapped by the rear seat as he apparently tried to reach for tennis gear.
Deters said he learned Tuesday night from Kyle's father, Ron Plush, that there were still photographs in Isaac's report. He said he and Mayor John Cranley agreed that the committee hearing should not be held until the prosecutor's office saw those photos.
The death of the 16-year-old Seven Hills School student has drawn national attention.
And it has put the Cincinnati Police Department and its 911 call center in the spotlight.
On April 10, Kyle Plush was in his minivan in one of the school's parking lots when he was pinned by a back seat when he reached for his tennis gear.
He was suffocating when he used his voice-activated smartphone to call 911 – not once, but twice.
The first time, he didn't give a description of the vehicle. In the second call, when he did, the dispatcher says she couldn't hear him. Video shows Offices Edsel Osborne and Brian Brazile driving through a Seven Hills parking lot. The video doesn't show the officers getting out of their cruisers.
The teenager died of chest compression and was found six hours after the 911 calls by his father.
Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police president Sgt. Dan Hils has said that the officers dispatched to Seven Hills were looking for a female who could not get out of her van, possibly because the electronic locks were malfunctioning.
Hils said the officers "are heartbroken to know that they were so close but were not given the information to be able to do their jobs."
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