Trial Set to Start for Hit-and-Run that Claimed OH FF

Cleveland Firefighter Johnny Tetrick, 51, was struck clearing debris from an interstate last year.

By Cory Shaffer

Source cleveland.com (TNS)

July 17, 2023

3 min read

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A trial is set to begin Monday in the case of a man charged with murder in the November hit-and-run death of Cleveland firefighter Johnny Tetrick.

Leander Bissell, 41, also faces charges of involuntary manslaughter, felonious assault, aggravated vehicular homicide, failure to comply and leaving the scene of an accident in the Nov. 19 death of the 51-year-old Tetrick, who was cleaning debris from an accident on the Shoreway when he was struck.

Court records show Bissell plans to waive his right to have a jury hear his case. Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Timothy McCormick will render a verdict at the trial’s end.

Bissell has been held in the Cuyahoga County Jail on $500,000 bond since his arrest hours after the incident.

Prosecutors plan to rely heavily on video evidence to pin the killing on Bissell, according to court filings.

Tetrick, a 27-year department veteran, was among a crew of Cleveland first responders who went to a crash on Interstate 90, just east of the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard exit about 8 p.m.. The crash involved a sedan that had flipped over in the left-hand lane and an off-duty Cleveland police officer driving a car that pulled over in the right-hand lane, court records show.

Dashboard camera video from Bratenahl police cruisers show a white Chevrolet Malibu drive around the line of backed-up traffic into the second lane from the left, which was closed, court records say.

The car sped up as it blew threw the accident scene and struck Tetrick from behind as he was picking up debris, records say. The impact sent Tetrick flying several feet across lanes of traffic, according to a copy of the accident report.

Ohio Department of Transportation traffic cameras captured the Malibu as it kept driving eastbound on I-90 and got off at the East 152nd Street exit, prosecutors wrote in court filings. City of Cleveland security cameras picked up the car as it turned onto Ridpath Avenue, where Bissell lived in an apartment building.

Security videos from an apartment building on Ridpath show a white Malibu with front-end damage pulled into a parking spot minutes later, and a man, who prosecutors say is Bissell, got out and walked into his apartment building, the records say.

Video from earlier in the day showed the same man getting into the car at about 3:30 p.m. and driving off, prosecutors wrote. The car was not damaged at that point.

Police searched Bissell’s apartment and found clothing that matches that of the man seen getting out of the white Malibu on the video, records say.