TRENTON, Butler County — A Butler County man suspected of leaving a couple injured after striking their vehicle from behind a week ago has been arrested and accused of committing multiple felony offenses, including aggravated vehicular assault in the hit-skip incident, the Trenton Police Department announced Thursday.
Leiayre Jurrell Freeman, 29, of the 700 block of Granada Avenue in Lemon Twp., was apprehended Wednesday when Trenton police, along with county sheriff’s deputies and troopers with the Ohio State Highway Patrol, located the suspected hit-skip vehicle in the back yard of a home.
>> Authorities identify 2 who were killed in Darke County head-on collision
A tarp covered the vehicle, police said in a prepared statement to WHIO.com and News Center 7 and other media released Thursday afternoon.
Police said the incident that led to Freeman’s arrest occurred July 14, when a couple stopped on East State Street in Trenton, waiting to turn into Cassano’s Pizza King, was struck from behind by a GMC Envoy SUV.
The driver of the Envoy then did several U-turns and fled.
The couple, a husband and wife whose names police have not released, were taken to a hospital by a Trenton Fire crew.
The wife suffered some bruising and was released.
Her husband suffered fractured vertebrae in his spine and had to have surgery. He remains in a hospital, police said, and will be immobilized in a back and neck brace for weeks.
Police investigators said when they asked the department’s Facebook community for assistance in identifying the vehicle that fled that night, investigators received tips “almost immediately,” according to the police department statement. Police spent the next several days following up on the information from those tips.
Freeman was not listed as a person in custody at the Butler County Jail, based on a check WHIO.com made late Thursday afternoon.
©2022 Cox Media Group
