Paper: Photographer shot by cop who mistook camera for gun

A photographer for a small news organization who was shot by a sheriff's deputy who mistook his camera for a weapon is uninterested in seeing the officer punished, the newspaper has said.

Photographer Andy Grimm left the office on Monday to photograph lightning when he saw Jake Shaw, a Clark County sheriff's deputy, performing a traffic stop in New Carlisle, north of Dayton, The New Carlisle News reported yesterday.

Grimm got out of his Jeep to take pictures of the traffic stop and started setting up his tripod and camera when he was shot in the side, the newspaper reported. The shooting happened about 10:15 PM (local time), according to the sheriff's office.
 

"I turned around toward the cars and then 'pop, pop,'" Grimm said in the newspaper's story.

The sheriff's office yesterday said that it had placed Shaw on administrative leave and that he will attend a "critical incident debriefing." The agency has planned to release records and body camera footage of the shooting.

"Our hearts and prayers are with Mr. Grimm as he recovers and with Deputy Jake Shaw and we ask the community to keep both of them in your hearts and prayers as well," Maj. Andy Reynolds of the sheriff's office said in a statement.

An update on the news organization's Facebook page says Grimm is "is very sore but otherwise is doing fine" after surgery and doesn't want Shaw to lose his job.

"This is a small town. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody looks out for one another," Dale Grimm, Grimm's father and the publisher of the weekly paper along with two others, said in a phone interview Tuesday morning.

Dale Grimm said it's not clear what the deputy was thinking.

The case has been turned over to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. At the request of the Clark County prosecutor's office, prosecutors from the Attorney General's office will handle the case.

It's not uncommon for local prosecutors to make such a request, especially in communities where prosecutors and sheriff's office authorities work closely together.