Ohio dad who 'gunned down' his kids arrested in harrowing footage

Publish date: 2024-06-12

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Harrowing new police bodycam footage shows the moment officers came upon a nonchalant Ohio father sitting down next to his rifle after allegedly shooting his three young sons to death.

“You show me your hands now!” screams a cop as he advances across a grassy yard toward the Clermont County home where Chad Doerman, 32, is believed to have gunned down his three boys. “Stand up and walk to me!”

But Doerman remained calmly sitting on a stoop at what is apparently his home, the footage shows.

He looked as if he had socks on but no shoes and a rifle was placed neatly next to him.

He was taken into custody without incident.

“I ain’t gonna hurt you,” Doerman says at one point after cops have him on the ground and cuffed.

A deputy can be heard at one point asking Doerman what was going on.

Chad Doerman, 32, is seen on police bodycam as he is handcuffed and arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of his three young sons on Thursday. WLWT5
Chad Doerman, 32, stands in court Friday after allegedly shooting his three sons to death. WLWT5

He calmly replied, “Nothing,” although his sons’ bodies lay just a few feet away, WLWT-TV reported.

His sons were ages 7, 4, and 3.

Doerman later allegedly confessed to lining up his three young sons and executing them with a rifle at their home — as his terrified daughter, Alexis, fled, screaming that he was “killing everyone,” prosecutors said Friday.

Doerman, who’s also accused of shooting the boy’s mother in the hand, has been charged with aggravated murder over the sickening ordeal that unfolded at the Monroe Township home Thursday afternoon.

A deputy is seen advancing on the Clermont County Ohio home where Chad Doerman allegedly shot his three sons on Thursday. WLWT5

One of the boys had tried to escape into a nearby field before being “hunted” down by his father, hauled back to the home, and then shot dead, prosecutors said as they detailed the depraved chain of events during Doerman’s arraignment.

“This is by far the most sickening, horrifying crime I have seen,” Clermont County Prosecutor Mark Tekulve told the court, according to WKRC-TV.

“I can only imagine the terror these little boys felt and experienced as their father — their protector — was murdering them.”

Emergency dispatch calls described the terrifying moments shots rang out.

Chad Doerman, 32, sits on the steps outside his home as deputies come to arrest him. WLWT5

The Clermont County Communication Center received the initial 911 call from a woman who was screaming that “her babies had been shot.”

A second 911 call was made to the Communication Center from a passerby who reported that a young woman was seen running down the road, yelling that “her father was killing everyone.”

A neighbor, Alexis Spoonamore, told WLWT TV she heard noises at the time of the shooting.

“I was sitting in the garage, and all of a sudden, I hear ‘boom, boom’ and like five more, and I was like ‘that’s seven shots,'” Spoonamore said. “I’m shaking, it was a lot. It was bad.”

Doerman’s older daughter, Alexis — here with her three little brothers — escaped the carnage. Go Fund Me

Doerman, who appeared in court Friday wearing a bulletproof vest, was charged with three counts of aggravated murder, all unclassified felonies, and is being held on a $20 million bond.

The boys’ aunt launched a GoFundMe to help her sister pay for the three boys’ funeral expenses.

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