Stand-Off: A Grieving Mother, a canceled meeting, and an unmet ultimatum
WATCH MORNING UPDATE
NORWALK — The doors of the Huron County Sheriff’s Office were supposed to open for Tricia Shepard this morning at 9 a.m. Instead, they’ve been slammed shut—not for a lack of evidence, but because of a “lack of silence.”
As we reported late Monday, the meeting between Sheriff Corbin and the Shepard family was abruptly canceled on Monday. Lt. Rob Duncan delivered the news, citing the family’s refusal to keep the media away from the public lobby as the primary reason for the reversal.
Advocate’s response
In response to the cancellation, Tracy Thom, an advocate working with Tricia Shepard, sent a formal follow-up to the Sheriff’s Office. Her message: A promise to a grieving mother should not be used as a bargaining chip, and constitutional rights are not optional.
Thom was not ambiguous.
“If it is your wish to cancel this meeting, after you’ve already a made a promise to this grieving mother, you may do so by handing her daughter’s s case over to the Ohio BCI. If Tricia Shepard gets proof that this has happened before tomorrow morning, then there would be no reason to meet and discuss the same story and excuses you’ve been telling her for years.”
‘Good Treatment’
The most striking part of the recent exchange was Sheriff’s Lt. Duncan’s question to Tricia: “Haven’t we always been good to you?”
The community now knows the answer to that. “Good treatment” in Huron County has meant a 90-minute wait in a lobby to file a harassment complaint and a traffic stop that ended with a grieving mother in a jail cell. It has meant two years of ignored requests to bring in the BCI—the same agency that had to step in to fix the HCSO’s failures in the Amanda Deanand Regina Hicks cases.
In Her Own Words
Tricia Shepard is no longer waiting for permission to speak. Regarding this cancellation and the department’s refusal to bring in independent oversight, she says:
“I just don’t understand why a sheriff wouldn’t want to find Katelynn’s killer,” she said. “I don’t understand why he wouldn’t want to use every available tool.
The Bottom Line
The Sheriff and his department are currently under criminal investigation by the Attorney General’s Office (AGO). While they may find the presence of the press “awkward” or the demand for BCI involvement “uncomfortable,” their discomfort does not override Tricia Shepard’s right to justice, Thom said.
If there is a murderer roaming free because of a botched 2018 investigation, why is the Sheriff more worried about a camera in the lobby than a killer in the county?
We will be there at 9 a.m. We’ll see if the doors are locked.