A Butler County grand jury has indicted a 19-year-old Hamilton man on felonious assault charges stemming from a July road-rage shooting that sent bullets into a pickup truck carrying a man and his pregnant wife in Middletown. Bryce T. Blevins allegedly opened fire during a chaotic chase that ended with his car crashed near a wooded area, where he fled on foot before deputies tracked down a bag containing a handgun and his own identification.
According to Journal-News.com, the incident began on July 23 when Blevins was allegedly driving a silver Honda erratically on Germantown Road near Carmody Boulevard and tried to cut off another vehicle. That vehicle was a pickup truck occupied by a man and his pregnant wife, and the confrontation escalated when Blevins allegedly fired multiple shots at the truck, which was struck by gunfire twice, according to the criminal complaint.
The male victim in the truck called 911 during the encounter, following Blevins' vehicle from a distance while relaying updates to dispatchers, the outlet reported. That pursuit ended when Blevins crashed the Honda near Ohio 4 and Thomas Road, then ran across the highway and into a wooded area on foot.
Bag Left Behind Led Investigators to Suspect
Blevins was not found at the crash scene, but investigators recovered a black bag he had been carrying when he fled the vehicle. Inside, according to the same Journal-News report, police found a handgun along with a paper identification document bearing Blevins' information.
Investigators also recovered a damaged license plate matching the silver Honda, and that plate was registered to Blevins, tying him directly to the vehicle involved in the shooting. The combination of the abandoned identification and the registered plate appears to have formed the backbone of the case brought before the grand jury.
Charges Shift Between Initial Filing and Indictment
Blevins was originally charged with three counts of felonious assault, criminal damaging, pointing and discharging a firearm, and improperly handling a firearm in a motor vehicle, per the Journal-News. The grand jury's indictment ultimately kept the three felonious assault counts but declined to indict him on the misdemeanor charges, instead replacing the improper handling count with a single count of discharging a firearm on or near prohibited premises.
Blevins is scheduled to be arraigned Sunday, and he remains in the Butler County Jail, the report noted.
Part of a Wider Pattern on Ohio Roads
The Middletown case fits into a string of road-rage shootings that have surfaced across Ohio in recent months. In Medina, two people suffered minor injuries when they were shot at on Interstate 71 North on Aug. 4, and state troopers used Flock license plate-reading cameras to track the suspect's vehicle to North Canton, according to fox8.com. Authorities there arrested 26-year-old Thassanai Suwannasin on a felonious assault charge and recovered two guns from his vehicle.
A similar case unfolded in Springfield Township, where a passenger in a blue Buick SUV allegedly fired two rounds into a gold truck near Vine Street and Shadybrook Lane, as reported by fox19.com. In that incident, the victim admitted to brake-checking the Buick beforehand, and the shooter, Matthew Lack, told police he opened fire after believing he saw a firearm in the other vehicle — though police later found no weapon or anything resembling one inside it. Lack was arrested and charged with felonious assault and improperly handling firearms in a motor vehicle.
