CLEVELAND — A Cuyahoga County judge set a $5 million bond for a 24-year-old man charged in the shooting death of a Cleveland police officer on the Fourth of July.
De’Lawnte Hardy first appeared in Cuyahoga County Municipal Court in northeast Ohio on Friday. He was charged with aggravated murder for allegedly shooting and killing Cleveland police officer Jamieson Ritter.
Ritter was shot on the Fourth of July when Cleveland police responded to a call in the Hough neighborhood for a man wanted for felonious assault.
Hardy was seen exiting a home on East 80th Street and trying to leave the area on a bicycle. He pulled out a firearm after officers attempted to arrest him and fired it multiple times.
One of the bullets struck Ritter. The officer was taken to the hospital where he ultimately died from his injuries.
10TV's sister station WKYC reports that the judge explained that Hardy was wanted for a separate incident on June 29 in the Garfield Heights suburb of Cleveland. The judge said Hardy allegedly stole his grandmother’s gun and shot her in the face.
The grandmother is currently on life support at a hospital, according to the judge.
“The uptick in gun violence involving young people, quite frankly, is alarming, exhausting and dismaying," the judge said before announcing the bond in court. "The harm to the families, the community and society at large is immeasurable.”
Ritter was a four-year veteran of the police department. Before his time in Cleveland, Ritter graduated from Syracuse University in 2019 and was a member of the Army National Guard. After joining Cleveland police in 2020, Ritter was deployed to Syria in 2022. He returned to Cleveland a year later.
Gov. Mike DeWine ordered Thursday that flags of the United States and the State of Ohio be flown at half-staff at all public buildings and grounds in Cuyahoga County and the state buildings in Columbus until sunset on the day of his funeral.