AKRON, Ohio – An Akron man pleaded guilty Wednesday in connection with his wife’s 2016 shooting death.
Phillip BattleSummit County Jail
Phillip Battle, 52, pleaded guilty to one count of involuntary manslaughter with a gun specification; one count of tampering with evidence; one count of failure to comply and one count of domestic violence, according to a news release from the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office.
Battle was arrested and charged after his wife, Anita Heard, was shot in the head on October 12, 2016.
The day before the shooting, Akron police were called to the couple’s house on Johnland Avenue. Battle and Heard each told police that they heard voices inside the house, but officers did not find anything unusual during their search, the news release says.
The following day, the release says, Battle called police and said that he had shot Heard. Officers found Heard with a gunshot wound to the head, but Battle was no longer at the house, police said.
Battle was spotted by police driving on nearby South Arlington Street, but he refused to stop when police tried to pull him over. He was arrested after a brief chase, police said.
Heard died from her injuries at a hospital nearly one month after she was shot, police said.
Battle is slated to be sentenced on Feb. 22 in Summit County Common Pleas Judge Paul Gallagher’s courtroom, the prosecutor’s office said.
If you’d like to comment on this post, please visit the cleveland.com crime and courts comments section.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
