Sharon Dorn’s partner wasn’t looking when the gunshot rang out inside the Cuyahoga Falls Natatorium on Oct. 18 — he had his headphones on and was mid-workout. But the moment someone described the man who’d just shot the 61-year-old personal trainer and fled, he knew exactly who it was. “It’s Craig,” he said.
That recognition, detailed in a report from cleveland.com, pointed investigators to Craig Sipe, Dorn’s ex-boyfriend, within moments of the attack. Dorn, who lived in Stow, worked as a trainer at the natatorium and was pronounced dead there after being shot in the back while working with a client that morning.
According to the outlet, Dorn’s partner said he did not witness the shooting itself because he was focused on his own workout and had headphones in. It was only after he heard a secondhand description — a man who’d come into the facility, identified as Dorn’s ex-boyfriend — that the pieces fell into place for him.
A Breakup Nearly a Year Old, but Sipe Kept Coming Back
Dorn’s partner told the outlet that he and Dorn had worked together as personal trainers for a few years before they started dating, and that Dorn and Sipe had ended their relationship nearly a year before the shooting. Despite the breakup, Sipe remained a member of the natatorium and, per the same account, continued showing up at the facility for months afterward.
One facility member described Sipe as “very unstable,” the report states. Sipe is also said to have stared at Dorn while at the facility in the time since their split, part of a pattern that, in hindsight, her partner connected almost instantly to the violence that followed.
How the Shooting Unfolded
Police said Sipe entered the facility shortly before 9:30 a.m. that Sunday and approached Dorn while she was working with a client. According to police body-camera footage cited by the outlet, Sipe pulled out a gun and shot Dorn in the back before fleeing the scene in a black SUV.
Dorn was rushed to Summa Health System’s Akron Campus, where she was pronounced dead at 9:51 a.m. Sipe turned himself in to police around noon the same day. Investigators collected a black backpack and a handgun connected to Sipe, and an unidentified man consented to a search of that backpack, per the report.
Grand Jury Indictment and Charges
Sipe now faces murder, aggravated murder and felonious assault charges in connection with Dorn’s death, along with firearm and weapon-forfeiture specifications, after a grand jury returned an indictment against him, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. At an earlier appearance in Stow Municipal Court, Sipe pleaded not guilty to one count of aggravated murder, and his bond was set at $1 million, the paper reported.
Dorn’s obituary, posted by Redmon Funeral Home, says she was survived by her partner, Vince Berry, and had worked in sales at Gardiner for more than 20 years. She was remembered as a devoted mother of three who loved fashion, fitness, family, her partner and her dog.
Part of a Rising Toll Across Ohio
Dorn’s killing adds to a grim statewide pattern. An Ohio Domestic Violence Network report released in late October found that 11 intimate partner-related deaths in its reporting period occurred in public places, and that the state recorded its second-highest number of such deaths in the 11 years the network has tracked annual statistics, per the account relayed by cleveland.com.
A separate ODVN press release covering the year ending June 30, 2025, counted 157 domestic violence fatalities statewide — the highest total since the organization began compiling the report, and a 37% jump from the 114 fatalities recorded the previous year, according to the Ohio Domestic Violence Network. Guns were used in 144 of those 157 deaths, or 84%, the network reported.
A more recent 12-month tally found 134 people killed in Ohio domestic violence cases, a 15% decline from the prior year, though it still ranked as the second-highest total in the network’s 11 years of record-keeping, according to The Columbus Dispatch. Separately, Ohio saw 40 murder-suicides in 2025, totaling 80 deaths, cleveland.com reported in a related piece examining why the state’s domestic violence deaths have risen.
