A Montgomery County grand jury has indicted 22-year-old Angelo J. Locurto III on dozens of charges stemming from an Aug. 19 confrontation in which he allegedly rammed a marked Kettering police cruiser and two unmarked police vehicles with a stolen Chevrolet Suburban outside a BP gas station. Locurto is scheduled for arraignment Tuesday in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court, roughly two weeks after the encounter that ended with officers tasing and arresting him in the station's parking lot.
According to court documents cited by the Dayton Daily News, the incident began around 11:14 a.m. that Wednesday when Kettering officers responded to South Smithville Road and Moler Avenue to assist Dayton police with a stolen vehicle investigation. Undercover Kettering officers then located the Suburban in the BP lot at Wilmington Pike and South Smithville Road, where Locurto allegedly rammed the marked cruiser and the two unmarked vehicles before officers tased and took him into custody, according to Kettering police public information officer Cynthia James. Police removed a passenger from the Suburban during the encounter, and Dayton officers ultimately recovered the stolen SUV.
Court records reviewed by WHIO-TV confirm that the passenger was a woman who was removed by officers during the vehicle intercept. The station also reported that Locurto had an active outstanding warrant for his arrest at the time of the Aug. 19 stop, in addition to the charges stemming from the pursuit itself — a detail that offers a possible explanation for why he may have resisted so violently. The specific nature of that prior warrant has not been disclosed, and it remains an open question whether the passenger will face any charges of her own.
How a License Plate Camera Triggered the Stop
The chain of events traces back to an automated alert from one of Kettering's Flock Safety license plate reader cameras near Smithville and Forrer roads, which flagged the vehicle and prompted undercover detectives to track it to the BP station, according to the city's weekly police blotter. Kettering has operated a network of 10 Flock Safety cameras since June 2022, a system that the City of Kettering says captures roughly 2 million plate reads and logs about 300 automated “Hot List” alerts every month. In 2023 alone, the department credited the network with 37 arrests and the recovery of 21 stolen vehicles, illustrating how heavily Dayton-area police now lean on shared surveillance technology to intercept stolen cars in real time.
Charges and Bond Set Before Indictment
Following his initial appearance in Kettering Municipal Court, Locurto was held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $1 million bond, set before the grand jury handed up its formal, multi-count indictment. Jail records show he was born July 13, 2004, and was booked into the Montgomery County Jail under ID 26-010294.
The grand jury's indictment lays out an extensive list of charges: one count of having weapons while under disability, one count of improper handling of a firearm in a motor vehicle, two counts of assault of a police officer, two counts of obstructing official business, two counts of failure to comply with an order or signal of a police officer, one additional count of failure to comply, four counts of receiving stolen property, one count of grand theft of a motor vehicle, and one count of vandalism.
What Ohio Law Says About the Exposure
Under Ohio Revised Code Section 2903.13, assaulting a peace officer performing official duties is elevated from a misdemeanor to a fourth-degree felony, carrying a potential 6 to 18 months in prison per count, according to the Smith Law firm. Separately, Ohio Revised Code Section 2923.13 classifies having weapons while under disability as a third-degree felony, punishable by 9 to 36 months in prison and fines of up to $10,000, per the Botnick Law Firm. Stacked across the two assault counts and the weapons charge alone, those statutes point to significant potential prison time even before factoring in the theft, vandalism and failure-to-comply counts.
Regional Pattern of Pursuit Cases
The case adds to a string of recent Montgomery County-area prosecutions involving stolen vehicles and violent confrontations with police. In February, a Montgomery County jury convicted 48-year-old Bernard Timothy Schuler on nearly a dozen felony counts after a violent Kettering home invasion in which a victim was pistol-whipped, bound, and had his car stolen, as Hoodline reported in its coverage of that Moraine man's conviction. And in April, Warren County courts sentenced Derrick Banks to 8 to 9.5 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to felonious assault on a police officer and failure to comply following an I-75 chase that ended in a head-on cruiser crash in Franklin, a case Hoodline detailed in its report on the Franklin I-75 minivan smashup. Whether Locurto's case will follow a similar sentencing path remains to be seen ahead of Tuesday's arraignment.
