Willoughby Hills man sentenced for shooting police officers

Timmothy Schmidt didn’t have a driver’s license when he drove his car to the Classic BMW in Willoughby Hills and he wasn’t allowed to carry the concealed gun — reported stolen a year earlier — that he used to shoot two police officers Sept. 28, 2017.

Schmidt, 31, was sentenced to 44 1/2 years in prison April 26 by Lake County Common Pleas Court Judge Eugene Lucci.

It was the maximum Schmidt could be sentenced for, but for Officer Craig Anderson, it wasn’t enough. The 28-year veteran was one of the two officers shot by Schmidt at the SOM Center Road dealership.

“He thought the lives of two officers were more important than him going to jail for a lousy traffic ticket,” Anderson said in court.

The officers were called to the scene on the day of the shooting for a customer problem. After speaking to the officers at the scene for about six minutes, Schmidt made an attempt to run away. In the matter of about eight seconds he fired nine rounds from a 9 mm handgun. Some of those bullets struck Anderson and his partner Cory Planisek, a four-year veteran of the department.

At his sentencing hearing, Schmidt described himself as a loner. In his loneliness, he turned to drugs — harder and harder drugs until he snorted heroin for the first time. He spent the next five years chasing the feeling of that first high.

He said he was high on the day of the shooting. He had a warrant out for his arrest in Garfield Heights and attempted to flee because he didn’t want to go through withdraw and the sickness that comes with it.

Anderson and Planisek spent four and five months out of work, respectively. Both are now back to full duty. While recovering from injuries, Anderson said he lost money because he was unable to work his side jobs.

“Do you have any idea of what you did to me, my partner, my family, to his family, to our co-workers?” Anderson asked Schmidt.

Anderson and Planisek were not allowed to have their guns at the sentencing.

“You know why?” Anderson asked Schmidt. “Because they thought it would be a hazard, but you know what, I’m not like you. I’m not like you one bit. I can control myself. You tried to kill me, you son of a bitch.”

In March, Schmidt pleaded guilty to two counts of felonious assault with a peace officer victim and one count of resisting arrest. He also pleaded guilty to three seven-year firearm specifications and a one-year firearm specification (Lucci said that last specification was merged with one of the seven-year specifications).

During the sentencing hearing, the prosecution played an interview Schmidt did with the EFNews podcast while he was in the hospital recovering from his gunshot wounds (he still has a catheter and colostomy bag). In that interview he said that he carried a gun to shoot himself in an instance where he was facing arrest, but when that instance did occur, that’s not what he did.

Lucci, a former Painesville police officer, said he wanted to send a message.

“You need to be made an example to society that you can’t just shoot firearms against police officers,” Lucci said. “This has to stop.”

Previously