Original subtitles

Even if you don't know a law enforcement officer,

they all feel a little bit like family.

Only another peace officer understands

your daily struggles and the work that you do.

Brian Eubanks lived in Newcomerstown with his wife.

He had been a police officer for about 12 years.

You get a sick feeling to your stomach.

I'm thinking the worst.

They never know what they're getting into when they pull over that car.

You trust the police officer.

It's not suspected in any way

that this could be a false report.

Those first statements did make us a bit suspicious,

because the detail he gave didn't seem terribly realistic

of someone who'd just walked up on a car in a traffic stop.

Chaz called and reached out to Newcomerstown Police Department.

He told me he was coming to me. He wanted to speak to me.

A manhunt is underway right now for two men,

after a suspect shoots a police officer in eastern Ohio.

I think he was shooting to kill me,

because the gun was originally pointed at my face and I moved.

Going out and giving interviews, there's something wrong.

Brian's story is that there was another car there,

but nobody else saw it.

There are people who stage scenes

that we think of as narrators or fabricators,

who want to say so much

that it's like they're overdoing it.

We become very good at understanding

truthful people versus people who are not being truthful.

Tuscarawas County is a lot of

rolling Appalachian foothill territory.

It has two big cities,

Dover and New Philadelphia, which are adjacent,

and villages,

but a lot of the area is rural farmland.

People are going to laugh

and think I'm a bit biased when I say this,

but it's a county of about 93,000 people,

and I think it's the greatest place to live in the world.

Everybody just really kind of looks out for each other.

It's a great county.

If you've lived here a long time and, you know,

it doesn't feel as safe as it used to,

I still think this is an extremely safe area to raise your family.

And I love that, you know, my family does live here.

Newcomerstown is the best kept secret in Tuscarawas County.

It's not the most glamorous town,

population a little under 5,000 people,

but they're a very core group of people that live there

that are very community-oriented, and their sports programs and...

for being a smaller area,

the community really comes together for one another.

I'd say our overall crime rate is very low,

and the people here get along very well

and feel more like family with everybody.

Being as small as it was, with the village,

though they had five or six police officers,

they do know one another.

Everybody knows everybody in Newcomerstown,

and the officers there were well-known by...

by the community members.

My sense about Newcomerstown

is that the people there

are familiar with each other.

They know each other a lot from their backgrounds.

They went to school together.

I don't feel that it's a place where a lot of people rush in and move in,

or a lot of people move out.

I don't think anyone moves to Newcomerstown

because they expect to be rich and famous there.

I think a lot of the people there

have family there, they grew up there.

I think a lot of family and social relationships bind that community.

People are close. And as a result of being close,

having gone to school together,

having known each other for so long

and knowing each other's relatives,

I think they're very trusting people.

The sheriff is the chief

law enforcement official of the county.

We have jurisdiction everywhere, on all property.

That's what's unique about us.

There are cities and villages

that also have police agencies,

and they have jurisdiction within your town,

but the sheriff covers all of those,

and we're brought into many of those

communities all the time

for different types of crimes.

In Ohio, a village is a town

that has a population of less than 5,000,

so I think Newcomerstown is around 3,700.

It's a great little community. The people that grew up there

and live there have a lot of pride in it.

They basically handle all the basic calls that they get in the village.

The pay for a Newcomerstown police officer was quite low,

and so I imagine that people there

are there because

they have a feeling of attachment to the community.

I certainly don't feel that in Newcomerstown

it was one of those places where

police are very afraid of the community

and the community is hostile toward the police.

I always felt that

they had the support of the community.

Brian Eubanks lived in Newcomerstown with his wife.

He had been a police officer for about 12 years

and was a very respected member of his community.

Even if you don't know a law enforcement officer,

they all feel a little bit like family.

You know, you've all committed to these oaths.

Only another peace officer understands your daily struggles

and the work that you do.

You get that sick feeling into your stomach.

You almost want to tear up

because you think of them immediately,

and the harm that was caused to them,

and what they would be without their family.

That's my first impression every time I ever hear of

an officer being shot or an officer down.

We all fear that call.

We've all embraced with our families at home,

uh, if that ever happens,

if the sheriff ever shows up at your doorstep, uh...

Emotionally, you've been set up for that, to understand what's going on.

Many of my earliest memories about

listening to the news and reading the news are about

law enforcement officers being killed

when they pull somebody over for a traffic violation,

or somebody who's wanted on a warrant.

And so I feared the worst.

When the call came in, when I was told by dispatch what had happened,

that there was an officer that was shot,

that is an all-out all-call.

So the office here,

surrounding agencies,

other federal agencies,

state agencies, local agencies,

we had an onslaught of people trying to come

and requesting to come and assist if needed.

We were given a description of a vehicle,

which was a black Geo Chevy Tracker,

and we, you know, began to comb the area for that.

We began searching databases to see what would mine.

And that's where the community came in too,

because almost immediately we started getting calls.

They issued a Blue Alert, which means that everyone

in the nearby community and nearby area

needs to be on the lookout for somebody who is armed,

someone who is potentially dangerous.

So not only were they terrified

that a cop had just been shot,

they were also terrified that maybe something could happen to them.

He's going to be capable of shooting anybody.

He's going to be capable of hurting anybody else,

if they were willing to risk something that intense.

There is someone incredibly dangerous,

at least as far as they know,

out there, still uncaught.

The quicker that the person is apprehended,

the quicker the community can calm down

and not be on the edge.

When people hear that a police officer has been shot,

they're upset, angry, afraid.

They'll come together in a protective way

and they'll want to make sure that this person who did this

is caught and justly punished.

You trust the police officer,

there's a reason they went into law enforcement,

that's to help people, to keep public safety.

So an officer that is calling in that he's been shot,

is not suspected in any way that this could be a false report.

I didn't count the cars, but it certainly felt to me

like every law enforcement agency in the region

was involved in trying to find the shooter,

because Officer Eubanks gave a description

of the vehicle, of the suspect,

and of what was in the vehicle. For all they knew,

they had a crazy cop-killer on the loose.

They have a personal stake for two reasons.

One is because the victim is one of their own,

it's one of their co-workers,

and two, it's because

they need to immediately protect the public.

Whenever I have covered a shooting in Newcomerstown,

it captivates the entire population

immediately and totally.

It quite filled everyone's consciousness at the time, I feel.

The detail he gave didn't seem terribly realistic

of someone who'd just walked up on a car in a traffic stop.

We were far from being completely suspicious of everything,

we just thought it was odd

that the description given was that detailed.

Chaz Gillilan had quite a history.

I had a prior burglary case with Chaz.

I'd had an armed robbery, invasion of a home with Chaz.

Chaz was somebody that law enforcement knew

in the tri-county area.

So, with that news breaking, that this was Chaz Gillilan

as being identified

early on as the shooter,

it spurred quite a response

from the three sheriff's offices in that area.

It wasn't unrealistic at all

to think that he might want to

you know, take a shot at law enforcement.

This was a guy who had a social-media account

where he had posed with guns and body armour before,

and he was an individual who definitely

portrayed himself as being the opposite of law enforcement.

When you have a named suspect,

and this suspect is supposed to have taken a shot

or tried to injure a police officer,

it's an absolute all-search for them.

They're not messing around.

They're going to do everything in the world to go find him.

Again, it's the emotion, right?

It's the whole idea that we have to protect each other.

So emotions are going to be high.

They're going to be doing everything in the world to go find this guy,

particularly if he's got a criminal past.

The law-enforcement response

would have been life-threatening,

because this person is considered armed and dangerous.

He's just shot a police officer.

They're not going to go to his house and knock politely on the door.

They're going in, SWAT team, guns.

They've got a dangerous person here

who didn't care if he took the life of a police officer.

So it's very possible that he could have been shot.

The chances for things to go wrong are unbelievable.

All the cops are heightened; they're anxious,

and they want this particular guy.

So if the person in the house makes a wrong move,

if he opens the door and runs,

or does anything to cause panic to the police,

yeah, there's all kinds of stuff that can happen, bad.

We ended up locating a home in Coshocton County,

inside the city of Coshocton, which is in a neighbouring county,

and we kind of watched the house,

just waiting.

When the name got out on social media,

it turned out that the suspect was getting phone calls himself

that he had been named.

He's going to be anxious, he's going to be scared,

because he knows now

every cop in that area is looking for him.

The chances for a mistake are increased,

because he can be driving down the road,

even going to the police station,

and if he's stopped, the cops are going to be anxious.

All he has to do is make one mistake,

chances are he could get hurt.

He and his girlfriend had started noticing Facebook posts,

different posts that were going on to social media,

and Chaz called and reached out

to Newcomerstown Police Department.

At that time I was there, and I spoke to Chaz by the phone.

Chaz was very rattled.

This was somebody that I had dealt with several times.

He told me he was coming to me,

he wanted to speak to me personally,

and that he was on his way.

But cell-phone coverage in that area between

Coshocton and Newcomerstown was very sketchy.

He called me at least two times,

with the cell phone dropping,

telling me he was afraid that if he ran across

another law-enforcement officer, that they would kill him.

When law enforcement thinks someone

has shot one of their own,

they will take the measures necessary

to apprehend that person.

And I think it should be understood

that that can be a very volatile situation.

The initial description

described the suspects in the car

and then a potential methamphetamine lab in the back seat.

Methamphetamine is as bad as it gets in the drug world,

it makes people extremely violent and act irrationally.

Now, you take a person who naturally doesn't like law enforcement,

who we know has weapons because he posed with them on social media,

and now is potentially using methamphetamine,

you're building up about the worst-case scenario.

And now you add desperation and paranoia,

maybe because he believes law enforcement is out to get him.

You don't expect a person like that to just walk out and surrender.

And that's where the tension came from,

and that's exactly how I felt as we were looking.

Him reaching out meant a lot to me.

When he did arrive at the Newcomerstown Police Department,

I escorted him in. He was still concerned,

on the phone with me as he came into the lot,

because he was still concerned that other officers were outside.

I'm sure he had a vision in his head.

Once we got him inside,

the first thing he said to me was,

"Detective Moore, I committed every crime you accused me of.

I did not commit this crime."

I can honestly say that from his history,

I don't believe he had ever cooperated with us,

but he was quick to cooperate this day.

When he showed up on his own, that was a pretty significant

sign to us that he probably wasn't involved,

because he had never responded like that before.

It was more of a typical cat-and-mouse:

he committed a crime, he fled, we had to prove it,

he wasn't going to cooperate, wasn't gonna help us do our job.

So in this case, him getting to us

with such a sense of urgency,

that was indicative to us that we had a problem

as far as him being the suspect.

That set the tone for my interview with him.

He was begging me for help at that point.

He was providing me his cell-phone information,

his girlfriend's cell-phone information.

Typically, somebody that has committed a crime

is about self-preservation.

They'll give you some information, but they won't give you everything,

and they only want to give you the stuff that makes them look good.

But in this situation, it changed,

and, uh...

...he gave me everything without me asking for it.

He just handed it over to me.

So we were able to get those cell-phone records rather quickly.

We were able to get them to an FBI agent that we work with,

and he was able to verify that

his phone and his girlfriend's phone

never left Coshocton County that morning.

Their phones were where they said they were

and never left. So, while we had someone

who was cooperating with us who normally didn't,

it's not as though we were going just take his word.

But when we were able to validate that

with the cell-phone information,

we were able to clear him that day, and that was...

that was very important for us to move forward.

Once Chaz comes in

and really officially clears his name with his alibi,

they are really back to square one of,

"Oh my God, how did this happen? Who could have done this?"

They really had no other suspects in mind.

The first thing that I knew I was able to do

was to speak with people who

had lunch at a local senior centre.

They were quite worried.

One woman said something like, "You know, if someone will shoot

a police officer, they'll shoot anyone."

I felt what the community felt. I felt fear and apprehension.

But of course, you have to go to work,

and you can't let your fear

overwhelm your ability to do your duty.

When there is a crime like this

that really affects the community so deeply,

the police want to solve it as quickly as they can.

They want to get someone apprehended.

They want to make sure that the community feels safe again.

There was fear,

and there was a willingness to help if they could.

So I think people were paying attention.

I think people were very alert to what was going on.

I think people were paying extra attention to every car that went by,

or to their own local school where their kids went,

to see who was around there. I think there was a good amount

of community watch going on, where they were trying to protect

their own community by being an extra set of eyes and ears for us.

This community comes together.

I remember several people within the community, cookies coming in.

I remember 20 or 30 pizzas being delivered.

Different things where the community outreach was immediate.

There was water supplied.

The immediate community outreach was phenomenal.

A manhunt is underway right now for two men after a suspect

shoots a police officer in eastern Ohio.

He was sitting there, both hands on the wheel, facing forward.

I had just got to the door jamb of his vehicle before I was shot.

I think he was shooting to kill me because the...

the gun was originally pointed at my face and I moved,

and that's how I got shot in the arm.

Yeah, he was trying to kill me.

One of the things I would be looking for

is the officer's behaviour

in going out and giving news media

interviews and talking about the incident,

and being shown with his bandage and everything.

There's something wrong.

'Cause generally, officers who have been involved

in that type of situation, that's the last thing in the world

they want to talk about, because this is a very traumatic situation.

If you think about it, someone is shooting at you.

That would have been a red flag to me.

The behaviour doesn't match what he's saying happened.

I learned the car that Patrolman Eubanks was driving

had the license-plate readers on them on that morning.

So, that was immediate data that I wanted.

That data was going to tell me

the travel routes of Patrolman Eubanks, it was going to give me

license plates of any vehicle he passed.

That data was going to be phenomenal

in helping me solve this case.

His failure to review that is deeply suspicious,

in the sense that

if he had told his colleagues that,

they would immediately have traced

all the other vehicles that passed his patrol vehicle at the time.

That would have led them to witnesses.

Those witnesses may or may not have seen the black Geo.

They may or may not have corroborated

or contradicted Eubanks' story.

And Eubanks must have known

his vehicle had a number-plate reader,

so it makes his account

not just not fitting together, but suspicious.

So, when you're looking at a license-plate reader,

it simply takes a photograph of every license plate

that comes by at a particular location,

and it gives a timestamp.

So at this particular time, this license plate

went by this particular location.

Well, if I have the license plate, I can go run an NCIC check

to determine who owns that car.

Upon receiving the data from the license-plate reader,

we had Patrolman Eubanks stopping right around 10 a.m.

on that morning on the bridge,

at the time of the radio stop,

which he broadcast out as being on a traffic stop.

Within, like, 41 seconds,

the first car drives past his vehicle,

that license plate is captured,

and the second car comes by another 15 seconds or so later.

That license plate is captured,

and 30 to 40 seconds later,

a third car drives by and that license plate is captured.

And that allowed me to go

interview these witnesses.

And with that, we were able to put together

what the witnesses' accounts were,

and that really solidified to me, at that point,

that, uh...

the way this case had been reported was not truthful.

Even the injury to his arm did not...

it was a very minor injury.

It was not consistent with what had been reported.

Nobody saw what was described by Brian,

and that becomes a real issue.

Brian's story is that there was another car there

and that's how he got shot,

but nobody else saw it.

That means there is a real discrepancy

between what he's saying, which they're already suspecting,

because it's overly detailed,

and what's being reported by witnesses.

Nobody has seen this vehicle,

so now we have to take another step back

and say, "OK, wait a minute. Something's wrong.

Now we have to go back and look at it again.

We may have to go back and talk to the officer again and say,

'Wait a minute, something's wrong, because it's not panning out.'"

When we are confronted with an incident like this,

even for a police officer, this would be a traumatic incident,

your memory does not retain information

in a that simple and coherent way.

He revealed all this stuff

almost right at the outset.

So that, in itself, is potentially quite suspicious.

When people reveal lots of detail very quickly, without prompting,

it can indicate that they're lying.

They're trying to control the narrative.

They're trying to control what everybody thinks about it,

and they are so confident

of the way they phrase things

that everyone will buy into it.

Pretty early on, I had suspicions.

Those original descriptions were problematic for me,

being just too detailed.

And then there's two thoughts.

One is, if I begin to believe that this did not happen,

then I start to put weight on my own shoulders,

where it's extremely important for us

to prove that and prosecute it for being made up.

The flip side of that is, no matter what I did

or what our office did to investigate this correctly,

there's going to be a segment of the community

who trusts law enforcement just a little bit less now

because of something like this. And that's where the real blow is.

When you're dealing with an officer like that,

and you've come to not believe him, this is very difficult.

Police officers are very close,

this is the old brotherhood, and it's... it is real.

We try to protect each other, because when you're out on the road,

when you're working, that's all we have, is each other.

So when you make a determination,

when you start looking and you're realising that

this police officer's not telling the truth,

there's something wrong, that's a big step.

One of the reasons police are close

is that they depend on each other to watch my back.

I need to know that you have integrity, that you're honest,

that you will be there.

If that starts to crumble

in one of the people you're counting on,

who you may like and be friends with,

and you start to realise he's telling lies,

that's pretty devastating for officers,

especially a tight-knit unit in a small town.

So the picture had built, and I did understand

what I was looking at at that point in time,

and I knew I was about to accuse a cop

of shooting himself and making this up.

So I had to be 1,000% right.

I could not have any judgment and err.

The only other person in the county

that knew my thought process was Sheriff Campbell.

It became an issue of attempting to get the officer

to come in here for an interview

and not necessarily let him know

that we no longer believed his story at all.

So that's a little more complicated than normal.

This is a guy who already knows about police interviews,

he knows about tactics and things like that.

We also likely knew that there was really one chance

we were going to have at this interview.

This officer knew what the law was,

and he knew that if he didn't want to speak to us, he didn't have to.

And if we didn't get this admission,

you know, from him, that, you know,

that we likely were never going to.

As the interview is starting to unfold,

he realised that I was accusing him.

So I ended my part of my interview at that point in time

and he ultimately wanted to speak with Chief Holland

and then spoke with the Sheriff.

Every profession has some sort of expertise.

The thing with an investigator is,

it's an intangible that's tough to articulate,

but we become very good

at understanding truthful people

versus people who are not being truthful.

Sometimes it's difficult.

People think there are these obvious signs

of someone being deceptive,

and sometimes there are, but many times there's not.

The only way you can learn whether someone's being deceptive or not

is interviewing them enough when they're not being deceptive,

to see what's normal for them,

and then see when they get away from that.

You know, it's kind of a behavioural analysis.

Once you believe that someone's guilty,

I think at that point it becomes a battle of

they think they just have to keep denying it.

But when they can see on your face that you're not buying any of it,

that's very defeating to them,

where they no longer think they're convincing you of their lies.

I think that's what he saw.

I think he realised that the gig was up in our mind,

and that I had decided that day that this case wasn't going any further;

that we were going to get this out to the community,

that this didn't take place, whether he admitted it or not.

Hey, Bryan, come on.

Officer Eubanks was interviewed initially

and he denied the allegations,

and he gave some statements that weren't terribly believable,

but had denial.

He ended that interview with Detective Moore,

and we put him in a conference room

and I spoke to him briefly,

and that wasn't part of an official interview,

that was just a conversation with him,

because I was trying to determine

how I was going to move the case forward;

whether I was going to arrest him or what I was going to do.

But I think he could tell by the fact that I wasn't allowing him

to just walk out, that he... we didn't believe him.

After those conversations, he came back in

and provided me a further interview.

He used self-preservation

and made up a story that was not believable,

but he did admit that he had shot himself.

He reported to me in the interview that

he thought he was losing his mind.

I did not buy that.

There was no truth to his statement.

He has a history of other issues,

involving financial issues

marital issues, adulterous issues,

and with those, anything that he says

becomes unlikely to be true.

Even his description that he actually meant

to physically harm himself and commit suicide

did not line up with his description of how that occurred

versus the injury on his arm.

There's nothing logical,

and when somebody is not being logical,

you know sooner or later, if you tell enough lies,

the lies will catch up to you.

And he was leading a life of numerous lies.

He could have done it to be able to receive

financial compensation from his injuries

so he wouldn't have to work again.

He could have done it for notoriety and for sympathy.

And he could have done it

just because he wanted the attention.

Unless Mr Eubanks tells us

why he did what he did, we will never know.

I was elated that we at least had an admission.

I know that the case is solved, and as with all cases,

when they're solved, that is a relief.

There aren't very many cases in a county like this

where we hold a press conference,

but this is one that had taken off as big news in the state.

And we did a press conference explaining

that the individual had made it up,

and I think that was a big relief to the community.

I really do.

When the news came out that he was charged

with doing this to himself and had lied about it,

people just couldn't believe it.

I mean, why on earth would he do something like this to himself,

and why would he have the whole town up in arms over it?

I think people felt they had been betrayed.

It's a community where people trust each other.

They are in contact with each other a lot.

They went to school together.

They intermarry.

Their friends become their family members.

Their cousins serve on village council with them,

and I think to them this felt like a betrayal.

We all have choices we get to make in life.

Whether you make the right choice or the wrong choice is up to you.

And if you choose to be a bad actor,

if you choose to lie,

if you choose to be deceitful, that's on you.

What that punishment is at the end of the day, that's not my problem.

But you will, sooner or later,

trying to cover up enough lies,

it will backfire.

The case was eventually scheduled

before the Tuscarawas County grand jury.

He was charged with making up this story,

which is a crime, and then later convicted.

His sentence was just local jail time.

It ended his career forever in law enforcement.

He's banned in Ohio from ever being a peace officer again.

I think that's something that had to happen,

but I think nobody really wins.

You know, what's the saddest thing

about this particular case is gonna be the public perception.

The public has been alarmed because one of their police officers

is supposedly shot.

They've gone through all this emotional trauma.

They've tried to help out, to do everything,

and now they find out that it's a lie.

The public is going to be...

they're going to go from being supportive

to being awfully upset over what exactly happened.

And what makes it even harder in this particular case

is the fact that it's a small town,

so everybody knows everybody.

And he's been there for 12 years.

He's probably had a really good reputation,

which is why the public is probably upset.

And now they find out that...

that is wrong, their perceptions were wrong.

Yeah, so it's going to be very difficult for a while.

Mr Eubanks' actions

erode public trust,

because as a law-enforcement officer

we expect him to have a higher integrity.

We expect them to act with honesty,

and when the public hears about something like this,

it essentially erodes trust in all police officers.

There may be 100 good ones and one bad one,

but he tarnishes the reputation

of police officers everywhere by doing this.

I mean, it was a big blow for the police department

once Bryan admitted that he did this to himself.

The community had a hard time trusting them again.

I mean, not only did he

set everyone into a state of fear,

hunting down one of their community members,

they're worried that maybe that could happen to them.

There's going to be a segment of the population

who's always going to think a little bit less of law enforcement,

or if another law-enforcement officer reports being shot at,

they'll bring this case up, and it might affect

whether they believe them, whether they wholeheartedly

try to help like they did in the Eubanks case.

A local newspaper had done a story about my first year

and had said how, in the first year,

it may not have been the biggest case, because there were murders,

it may have been the most important case, because I think that

showing the community that we will hold our own people accountable,

just like we want to hold others,

I think that's really important.

I don't think that Mr Eubanks

realised the ripple effect of his actions.

The consequences weren't just for him.

He put a lot of people in danger.

The suspect he named,

that person could have ended up being shot,

because this person now basically has a bounty on them

for shooting the police officer.

That could have happened. He caused statewide panic

and a misuse of resources.

You know, for a small bullet wound,

it certainly caused a lot of commotion.

This officer was playing on the emotions

of every other officer that's out there...

...because every single officer was thinking,

"There, but for the grace of God, go I."

That somebody else could have shot me.

Now, what would happen to my family? What would happen to my kids?

So he put the entire police department,

probably within that entire state,

through that, because now every single one of them

are going to have to judge whether they're doing the right thing,

is the right job for them.

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