NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio (WJW) – A FOX 8 I-Team investigation has led a U.S. Senator to call for a local judge to resign in light of the murder of a child outside a North Olmsted grocery store.
We did some digging to find out which police departments knew what and when, and we’ve now uncovered gaps in the justice system you rely on to protect you.
U.S. Senator J.D. Vance has taken to social media to comment on the case involving Rocky River Judge Brian Hagan and his handling of Bionca Ellis.
We found police and judges kept getting hands and eyes on Bionca Ellis.
We’ve also learned more about how she kept getting back on the streets until an attack last week on a boy and his mom outside the Giant Eagle. It left 3-year-old Julian Wood dead.
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The I-Team reached back out to North Olmsted police. Last month, they arrested Ellis for violating probation in a theft case, but police say a database didn’t show she had low-level warrants for assault in California.
Police didn’t know Ellis had told Cleveland officers she wanted to kill someone.
Detective Lieutenant Matthew Beck told us it’s unrealistic to expect every contact with law enforcement to show up.
“If every law enforcement contact was entered into a database, there would be nothing, but it’s just not physically possible. To do that at a national level would be overload to the system,” he said.
Rocky River Judge Brian Hagan released Ellis from jail on the probation violation days before the murder.
The judge released Ellis without holding a hearing even though a magistrate recommended a mental health check.
Now, Senator Vance has called for the judge to resign or be voted out.
The I-Team has questioned the judge about why no mental health check was done. And, we’ve asked what he would do differently in a case like this next time. He has told us he’d do nothing differently.
“So, there wasn’t any red flags shooting up that pole. There wasn’t any indications here. No sign of previous, violent acts,” Judge Hagan said.
We also wondered what kind of check gets done by the probation office for the Rocky River Municipal Court. Clerk of Court Deborah Comery told us that probation office only checks Ohio records.
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“We are not the FBI,” Comery said.
She added that the Rocky River Court does not have access to a national check.
The mother of Ellis has told the I-Team that her daughter has struggled with mental health issues.
“The hallucinations and the voices just got the best of her,” Yolanda Eggleton told us.
But police say nothing about that showed up in a national database either.
The judge did not respond to a request for comment about the senator’s call for a resignation.
Meanwhile, there’s now growing talk about what can be done to tighten gaps in the system.
“With everything that ever occurs, there’s always a learning experience,” Lt. Beck said.
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