Sheriff: Men were lured to Noble County by Craigslist adCALDWELL, Ohio — He lay in the woods for seven hours, with an elbow shattered by an assailant’s bullet.
Lost, covered in his own blood and unsure if the men who hunted him were still nearby, a man from South Carolina hid in the forested hills outside Caldwell until after dark on Nov. 6. Deciding it was safe, he then made a painful 2-mile journey to the nearest farmhouse to call for help.
Investigators say he was the lucky one.
On Tuesday, they found the body of a man buried in a shallow grave near the site where the other man was attacked.
By surviving his ordeal two weeks ago in Noble County, the victim, whose name authorities haven’t released, helped uncover an elaborate scheme by at least two men to lure people with the promise of work from across the country to Ohio. Authorities say the real plan was to rob and kill them.
Two suspects were taken into custody Wednesday after an investigation by a bevy of federal, state and county agencies.
The Akron Beacon-Journal reported last night that the suspects are a 16-year-old Stow-Munroe Falls High School student in Ohio and a 52-year-old Akron man. Their names had not been released.
The adult was being held in the Summit County Jail in Akron on multiple counts related to prostitution, the newspaper said. His bond was set at $1 million.
The juvenile had not yet been charged.
Noble County Sheriff Stephen Hannum said the investigation began when an officer was called to a lonely farmhouse near Fulda, about 100 miles east of Columbus, on a report of a man with a gunshot wound.
According to the victim:
He had come to Noble County after responding to a Craigslist advertisement for a job on a 688-acre cattle farm. Because he would be living at the farm, he was told to bring all of his belongings.
The victim met two men for breakfast in Marietta and then followed them in his own vehicle to Caldwell. He left his truck there, joining the men in their vehicle to complete the trip to the farm. Instead, the men pulled over on Don Warner Road, a gravel country path that winds through the hills on the eastern edge of the county.
The men said they would need to complete the trip on foot because the road ahead was impassable, so the man and one of his assailants got out of the truck and began walking through the woods. That’s when the man heard what he thought was the sound of a gun being cocked.
He looked and saw the other man had a handgun pointed at his head.
The victim was able to deflect the barrel and start running, but not before the other man shot him in the elbow. The assailant continued shooting at the victim as he ran, but the man was able to escape into the woods.
“He said he saw the house all lit up and thought it looked like a friendly place,” said a woman who answered the door yesterday at the residence where the man sought help. She would not give her name because she said she was still shaken by the incident.
Things like that just don’t happen in this tiny community of about two dozen houses that straddle Fulda Road near the almost 200-year-old St. Mary’s of the Immaculate Conception Church.
She said the man rang the doorbell and beat on the door until she answered, and that his shirt and pants were covered in dried blood. The man told her what had happened and said he was afraid the men were going to steal his truck and the all-terrain vehicle and motorcycle that he had brought from South Carolina.
The man was treated at the house by paramedics and eventually taken to a hospital in Akron, where he underwent reconstructive surgery on his arm.
Then, on Nov. 11, the sheriff’s office received a call from a woman in Boston who was concerned about her twin brother, who had gone missing after responding to a similar ad. The brother, who lived in Florida, had last been seen in Parkersburg, W.Va., on Oct. 22.
Hannum said his office called in help from the FBI, the state’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the U.S. Marshals Service and a laundry list of other agencies to assist with the hunt.
On Monday, they found a shallow grave that investigators think was intended for the man who escaped on Nov. 6. On Tuesday, they found a second grave near the first, only this time containing the body of a man they think was killed by the same two assailants.
Authorities have not identified the man yet or determined how he died. The Licking County coroner’s office is handling the autopsy.
Hannum said yesterday that there’s no evidence that there are more victims, but he would not rule out that there could be more people involved in the scheme than the two arrested.
The two suspects in the case were arrested in Summit County. Hannum would say only that they were not Noble County residents, but at least one was familiar with the area. The land where the graves were dug is owned by a nearby coal mine and often leased for hunting.
Hannum said authorities think the motive was simple greed. Property belonging to the victims already has been recovered by investigators.
Fred Alverson, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Columbus, said that the FBI has been assisting the Noble County sheriff’s office on the case.
“We’re reviewing the information provided by the FBI,” Alverson said.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/11/17/noble-county-shooting.html
