YOUNGSTOWN — The body-camera video of the early June 13 officer-involved shooting death of Mathue A. O’Malley, 27, in a West Side home demonstrates why police work is so dangerous and how quickly an incident involving a person in crisis can turn deadly.

The video is among the documents released by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation of its investigation of the confrontation between O’Malley and a Youngstown police officer at a home on South Maryland Avenue.

The investigative materials were released after a Mahoning County grand jury on Dec. 5 declined to indict the unnamed officer. BCI has released its investigation on its website in about 90 officer-involved shootings over the years, including the April 1, 2022, shooting death of James Sheets by Struthers police and the Oct. 12, 2023, fatal shooting of Ricco Acevedo by a Youngstown officer.

The list of documents released in the O’Malley case is long, including DNA reports, cellphone analysis, autopsy results, a review of the officer’s personnel file, interviews with victims, photographs, body camera videos, investigative audios.

One of the key findings in the documents is O’Malley’s death certificate. It says his cause of death was “gunshot wound of the head” and manner of death as “suicide.” Another line adds, “shot self with handgun.”

O’Malley was pronounced dead about a half an hour after the shooting at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital.

The Mahoning County Coroner’s Office also released a document that provides a little more explanation, saying the findings of O’Malley’s autopsy were that he died of a “perforating gunshot wound of the head, contact range.”

Theresa Gaetano, lead investigator for the Mahoning County Coroner’s Office, explained that that ruling means the gun that fired the fatal bullet was making contact with O’Malley’s head when it was fired. There was no mention of O’Malley having any other gunshot wounds on the coroner’s report.

The officer who fired at O’Malley was in the front of the house firing toward the back of the house, and O’Malley was in a bedroom at the back of the house. Some of the shots passed through multiple walls.

The woman O’Malley lived with in the home was in the bedroom with O’Malley when the shots were fired. She was grazed on the hip by one of the dozen or so bullets that were fired.

In an interview with BCI, the woman said that she was “standing near O’Malley when the gunshots were fired and felt something and ran into the bathroom. (The woman) advised when she came out of the bathroom, she observed O’Malley had been shot by police or had shot himself,” a BCI document states.

She told investigators O’Malley knew police were coming to the home because she had tried to call 911 and “YPD was calling her telephone while O’Malley had it,” the document states.

The woman said she was suspicious of O’Malley’s relationship with one of her children and had asked the child that night if anything sexual had been happening between O’Malley and the child, and the child said there had been, according to a BCI document.

As with other officer-involved cases BCI has investigated, the names of certain people are redacted from its documents, including the name of the officer involved. The names of the people in the home at the time of the O’Malley shooting are also redacted.

STARTLING BODY CAM VIDEO

The body camera video from the officer who fired the shots that killed O’Malley is startling. One reason is how quickly gunfire fired in the direction of the officer started after a woman answered the front door and urged the officer to enter.

The officer was alone when he knocked multiple times about 12:42 a.m. The first sounds from inside the home were a woman’s voice swearing at someone and then someone unlocking the front door and the door opening.

“Hello,” the officer says calmly.

But the woman who answered the door was anything but calm, saying rapidly, “Please come in. He got the gun. He got the gun. And my momma’s in the room.” She pointed behind her and to the left toward a hallway and bedroom in the back of the house.

She barely got those words out when the body camera captures the sound of two gunshots, and it picks up a view of a dark hallway leading to the bedroom and two muzzle flashes from a gun seemingly aimed toward the officer.

The shots occurred four seconds after the officer said “Hello.”

The officer quickly raised his arms toward the gunfire, holding his weapon and yelled “Down-Down-Down,” apparently trying to order the shooter to put the gun down.

None of the body camera video shows O’Malley until after the gunfire ended.

After the third shot and a muzzle flash from the rear of the home toward the officer, about two seconds later, the officer fired numerous shots toward the muzzle flashes. Many of the shots apparently hit a wall in the direction of the muzzle flashes to the left of the hallway.

That gunfire lasted about six seconds, followed by the woman who answered the door crying out and another woman’s voice from the back of the house screaming in horror.

“Go help her,” the first woman yelled to the officer, referring to the woman in the bedroom.

That woman came down the hallway with her hands in the air. The officer appeared to be asking her to remain where she was. “I want you to be safe,” the officer said as the woman continued toward the officer and the girl.

“I’m sorry, Momma,” the first woman could be heard saying as the officer approached the hallway, walking toward the bedroom with his weapon drawn.

After a few seconds, the officer reached the doorway to the bedroom, where the man could be seen on the floor, not moving, a gun near his hand.

“He’s still breathing,” the officer yelled out.

“Get the gun. Get the gun,” the officer said as a second officer appeared to his left and picked up the gun from the man on the floor. A smoke detector was going off.

Then a woman’s voice repeatedly pleaded, “Please help him.” Two other officers entered the home with one of them having a medical kit and saying the man on the floor had a shallow pulse. Another officer applied pressure to a gunshot wound on the man’s head.

One of the officers asked the officer who fired his weapon if he was OK. He replied that he was and added, “My adrenaline is going like a thousand (deleted) miles an hour, but I’m good.”

In the days after the incident, Youngstown police issued a news release stating that during a “domestic-disturbance call,” the first responding officer was “immediately met with gunfire from a male individual inside the house.”

It added that “Shots were exchanged between the officer and the male, resulting in the male being shot. The male was transported to St. Elizabeth Medical Center, where he is listed in critical condition. No officers were injured during this incident.”

The release noted that BCI was called to conduct an independent criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the shooting. The Mahoning County Coroner’s office released the name of the man who had been killed June 17 in a press release.

The involved officer’s personnel file indicated that he “had no relevant discipline in his personnel file,” and “There was no discipline for use of force.”

A recorded interview with one of the women in the home was conducted about five hours after the incident by BCI agent Charlie Snyder. The woman told Snyder that she lived at the South Maryland address with her mother, O’Malley and her siblings. She said her mother arrived home about 4 p.m. that day and O’Malley arrived earlier.

Later, there was a discussion among her, O’Malley and her mother about O’Malley and the woman having been romantically involved, but O’Malley denied it. The woman called police at 12:04 a.m. after the argument had continued for a couple of hours.

When the officer knocked on the front door, O’Malley tried to stop the woman from answering the door, but she did answer it, the woman said. As she opened the door, she heard O’Malley cocking a gun. The woman said she “yelled that her mother was in the room with O’Malley.”

Then she looked over and “saw O’Malley begin shooting at police and then police shooting back,” the document states. “She indicated observing O’Malley fall onto the floor at this point.”

The Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office presented the case to a county grand jury. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office carried out O’Malley’s autopsy.

According to O’Malley’s obituary, he was owner of Flying Eagle, a carpentry and construction company, working in low-income housing remodeling and demolition.