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Case against man accused of killing Cleveland officer heads to grand jury as new details emerge about incident that started it all

Prosecutors believe De'Lawnte Hardy fatally shot his grandmother in Garfield Heights five days before killing Officer Jamieson Ritter as police tried to arrest him.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The case against the man accused of killing Cleveland Police Officer Jamieson Ritter is headed to a grand jury, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office confirmed to 3News Tuesday. This comes as we learn new details about another incident De'Lawnte Hardy was allegedly involved with.

The 24-year-old Hardy is already facing aggravated murder charges and a $5 million bond in Cleveland Municipal Court in connection with Ritter's death, but the prosecutor's office is also reviewing the initial shooting that prompted the response from Cleveland police on July 4.

The Garfield Heights Police Department says it received a call for that incident at 1:12 a.m. on June 29 from a home on Reindeer Avenue. The caller said he came home and found his garage open, backdoor unlocked, and his wife lying in her blood.

"The emergency is my wife is laying on the floor when I came home and blood everywhere, and I don't know what’s going on," he told the dispatcher in the 911 call sent to WKYC.

The dispatcher immediately asked, "Is she breathing? Is she breathing?"

"I don't know," he responded.

"You need to get down and tell me if she's breathing!" the dispatcher frantically responded.

Sixty-three-year-old Beatrice Porter was breathing, but she was unresponsive. Her husband said he was gone all day, but her grandson Hardy had been at the home earlier in the day.

"Her grandson was here and he's not here (any)more, so I don't know," Porter told authorities. "I looked in the garage and what was missing out of my garage was my bike."

"It was shocking, but then when we found out, I was like, 'Oh wow,'" neighbor Gilbert Evans said in a Tuesday interview.

Evans says he's only seen Hardy outside the home a couple times. The last time was on June 28, hours before Hardy's grandmother was found shot.

"I work at noon, so when I left out the house, I (had) seen him just jogging, and then a gray SUV pulled in," Evans recalled. "It didn’t go all the way — they didn't pull all the way in the back — and he just got in the car and looked weird. When I (saw) it, it was weird, because I never (have) seen a young man run from here or come out of this house."

Beatrice went to the hospital, but five days passed before Cleveland police got a call that Hardy — now a wanted man for felonious assault — was in the 1500 block of East 80th Street in the Hough neighborhood. Officers, including Jamieson Ritter, attempted to arrest Hardy when police said he tried to get away on a bike and then fired several shots. Ritter was hit and killed.

Authorities later revealed Hardy's grandma Beatrice also died in the hospital that same day. Prosecutors confirmed to 3News it has both cases and is screening for charges.

Hardy is currently being held in the Cuyahoga County Jail on a $5 million bond.

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