Dayton Shooting

Case background and investigation

At about 1:05 a.m. on August 4, 2019, a gunman opened fire on East Fifth Street in the Oregon District, a nightlife area of Dayton, Ohio. According to Time, the shooting lasted from 1:05:35 to 1:06:07 a.m. The attacker, 24-year-old Connor Betts of Bellbrook, wore body armour and a mask and carried an AR-15-style .223 calibre firearm fitted with a 100-round drum magazine. He fired about 41 rounds.

Nine people were killed: Lois Oglesby, 27; Saeed Saleh, 38; Derrick Fudge, 57; Logan Turner, 30; Nicholas Cumer, 25; Thomas McNichols, 25; Beatrice Warren-Curtis, 36; Monica Brickhouse, 39; and the gunman's 22-year-old sibling, named by authorities as Megan Betts. Seventeen people were wounded by gunfire, according to the FBI's closing summary as reported by Ideastream, and news reports put the total number injured at 27, including people hurt while fleeing.

Six Dayton police officers who were already on patrol in the district ran toward the gunfire and shot Betts as he approached the entrance of the Ned Peppers bar. Time reported that the officers fired 65 rounds. In January 2020, Montgomery County Prosecutor Mat Heck Jr. announced that the case would not go to a grand jury because a review by his office had found it clear that the officers acted in self-defence and in defence of others, Dayton 24/7 Now reported. The criminal review was then closed.

A friend of the gunman, Ethan Kollie, was prosecuted in federal court. Kollie pleaded guilty to illegally possessing firearms and to lying on a federal firearms transaction form, and in February 2020 he was sentenced to 32 months in prison. Investigators said he had helped Betts obtain firearm parts, body armour and the drum magazine. He was not charged with taking part in the attack.

The FBI and Dayton police announced the end of their investigation in late November 2021. The inquiry involved more than 125 interviews and the review of about 400 hours of security video, and was slowed by encrypted digital evidence. According to Ideastream's report on the findings, the FBI concluded that Betts acted alone, was not directed by any organisation or aligned with a specific ideological group, and had fantasised about mass shootings and murder-suicide for years. Investigators found no indication that he had told family or friends what he intended, and said he had probably broken federal law by lying about drug use when he bought the weapon.

A permanent memorial to the victims, called the Seed of Life, was unveiled in the Oregon District on August 4, 2024, the fifth anniversary of the attack, WCPO reported.