State v. Reeder

2021 Ohio 2988
Ohio Court of Appeals·Decided August 30, 2021·No. CA2020-09-012 CA2020-09-013·Published·Cited by 12 cases

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS

TWELFTH APPELLATE DISTRICT OF OHIO CLINTON COUNTY

STATE OF OHIO, :

Appellee, : CASE NOS. CA2020-09-012 CA2020-09-013

:

- vs - OPINION : 8/30/2021

JASON DANIEL REEDER, :

Appellant. :

CRIMINAL APPEAL FROM CLINTON COUNTY COURT OF COMMON PLEAS Case Nos. CRI 19-500-231 and CRI 20-500-028

Andrew T. McCoy, Clinton County Prosecuting Attorney, and Danielle E. Sollars, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellee.

Jon R. Sinclair, for appellant.

HENDRICKSON, J.

{¶1} Appellant, Jason Daniel Reeder, appeals from his convictions in the Clinton County Court of Common Pleas for robbery, telecommunications fraud, and various drug- possession offenses. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm appellant's convictions.

{¶2} At approximately 8:53 p.m. on December 2, 2019, a man entered Hidden Carry-Out, a convenience store in Wilmington, Clinton County, Ohio, wearing dark pants, a

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brown Carhartt-style jacket, a black ski mask or toboggan type mask, and black gloves. The man approached the store's worker, Carl Butts, and whispered, "I want your money." Butts thought the individual was joking and laughed. The man in the mask responded by pulling an object out of his pocket and striking Butts multiple times on the head. Butts, who began bleeding from injuries to his head, fell to the floor.

{¶3} The man demanded entry into the cash register and threatened to strike Butts again if Butts did not tell him how to open it. Butts told the man how to open the register and the man took approximately $450 in cash. The man also took a number of scratch-off lottery tickets before fleeing the store. Butts then pressed the store's emergency alarm to notify law enforcement of the robbery. Other than Butts, no one was present in the store during the robbery.

{¶4} Multiple officers from the Wilmington Police Department responded to the scene. When they arrived, they found Butts bleeding heavily from his head. They also found the handle of an airsoft gun. The item was taken into evidence, as the officers believed the item was used during the robbery to cause injuries to Butts' head.

{¶5} Butts was able to provide the officers with a description of the robbery-

suspect. Butts told officers that while he "recognized the voice" of his assailant as someone who had been in the store before, he was unable to identify the robber as the person had obscured his face with a mask. Butts provided a description of what his assailant had been wearing and described the man as a "light-skinned African American man." Butts was then transported to a nearby hospital, where he received nine staples and five stitches to his head.

{¶6} The owner of Hidden Carry-Out, Depak Patel, and his son, Nayan Patel, who managed the convenience store and handled the lottery portion of the business, arrived at

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Hidden Carry-Out after the robbery. The Patels provided law enforcement with a recording of the robbery, which had been caught on the store's security cameras. Nayan then contacted the Ohio Lottery Commission about the stolen lottery tickets.

{¶7} Regarding the lottery tickets, Nayan explained that each week the store received a delivery of lottery tickets with an invoice that inventoried each individual ticket that had been sent. Nayan went through each ticket and checked the ticket numbers against the invoice to make sure there had not been a mispack and that he received the correct items. He then scanned the invoice number to confirm receipt of the tickets. When it was time for the tickets to be placed on the store's floor for sale to customers, Nayan activated the roll of tickets. If a customer bought a lottery ticket, it could then be scanned though the lottery's own point of sale system.

{¶8} Michael Grause, an investigator with the Ohio Lottery Commission, looked into the lottery tickets stolen from Hidden Carry-Out. Grause explained that lottery tickets can be tracked similar to how UPS packages can be tracked. Each ticket in a roll has its own identifying number, comprised of three parts - a game number, a series or book number, and a ticket number. From this number, the Ohio Lottery is able to determine what store the ticket came from and in what store the ticket was eventually redeemed. When tickets are cashed in, they are validated over a telecommunication service known as the lottery system.

{¶9} From security footage of the robbery, it was determined that Cashword lottery tickets, as well as other lottery tickets, including a $250,000 A Year for Life ticket, had been taken. Grause was provided with the book numbers and the approximate span of tickets that were taken during the robbery. Using this information, Grause was able to run reports that identified when and where the stolen tickets were scanned to see if they were winning

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tickets or where the tickets were validated, or turned in, for cash at a retail store. These reports showed that the stolen tickets were either checked or cashed in at four different locations in Wilmington. At 9:22 p.m. on December 2, 2019, nearly one-half hour after the robbery occurred, a $250,000 A Year for Life ticket was validated at the Sunoco on South Street. Between 10:32 p.m. and 10:34 p.m. on December 2, 2019, four Cashword lottery tickets were scanned to see if they were winning tickets at a Kroger. At 10:52 p.m. on December 2, 2019, one of the winning tickets that had been inquired about at Kroger was validated at a Sunoco on East Main Street. Finally, at 2:04 p.m. on December 3, 2019, a Cashword lottery ticket was validated at Shop N Go.

{¶10} The details of when and where the stolen lottery tickets had been validated were shared with the detectives investigating the robbery. The detectives used the information to obtain security footage of the stolen lottery tickets being validated at the Kroger and two Sunoco stores. The Shop N Go did not have surveillance footage of the validation, but did have the lottery ticket that had been cashed in. The security recordings and recovered lottery ticket were taken into evidence.

{¶11} Detectives Scott Baker and Cody Juillerat reviewed the security footage obtained from Hidden Carry-Out, Kroger, and the two Sunoco stores. The detectives observed that the individual who robbed Hidden Carry-Out wore a black toboggan that had a white tag on it. The black gloves the robber wore had white writing on the side. Additionally, the brown Carhartt-style jacket the robber wore had a pocket or a slit for a pocket on the chest area of the jacket. The individual who cashed in the stolen lottery tickets shortly after the robbery occurred was not dressed in the same clothing as the robber. The person who cashed in the lottery tickets wore jeans and a grey-blue jacket. The individual's face was visible on the security footage. Based on his prior dealings with

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appellant, Detective Baker was able to identify appellant as the individual cashing the lottery tickets.

{¶12} Law enforcement obtained a warrant to search appellant's apartment for evidence relating to the robbery. Appellant resided on Mulberry Street in Wilmington. His apartment was located between Hidden Carry-Out and the South Street Sunoco, where the first stolen lottery ticket was validated. According to Detective Juillerat, it would only take two or three minutes to get from Hidden Carry-Out to appellant's residence by car and the two locations were easily within running distance of one another.

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State v. Reeder, 2021 Ohio 2988 (Ohio Ct. App. 2021).

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