Euclid's public information officer tells Scene that the Euclid Police Department did not take statements from Rhodes or Officer Louis Catalani, the other officer who was in Rhodes' car. Those statements are under the purview of the Bureau of Criminal Investigations and have not yet been released, so we do not know what caused Rhodes to enter Stewart's vehicle before shooting him.
Read the full police report below.
Eight officers' perspectives are included in the report. Each of them explains how they arrived at the scene — at East 222nd and Milton — to find Stewart in the driver's seat of a black Honda sedan with a gunshot wound in his neck and Tazer probes in his shoulder. Two officers broke the driver's side window to pull Stewart out of the car. (Other officers arrived later, when Stewart's body was laid on a tree lawn for chest compressions and pulse monitoring.)
Stewart was pronounced dead at 7:25 a.m. at the Euclid Hospital emergency room.
One officer reports that Stewart's car was seen "idling for over 20 minutes" before Rhodes initially responded to a report of a suspicious vehicle. Another officer took a witness statement from a Euclid resident living near the scene of the shooting: "Around 7am I heard yelling/screaming then I heard a car start up and it sounded like the gas paddle was being smashed then tires screeching I heard police cars then more tires and a loud boom I jumped up to check on my son." (sic)
The report does indicate that the police department has four DVDs containing dash cam video of the incident, as well as body cam footage from at least one other officer.
Luke Stewart police report by sandyatscene on Scribd
