A man is under arrest after Cleveland police say he tried to rob a driver near East 117th Street and Buckeye Road Tuesday night, a confrontation that left the driver with gunshot wounds. The suspect walked into a nearby hospital with a gunshot wound to the hip. The driver was also at a hospital and was listed in stable condition, according to the police report.
Officers were first called to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to investigate a reported car crash, according to Cleveland 19 News. The driver told police he had been the victim of an attempted robbery and that shots were fired during the encounter, per the police report cited by the station.
Investigators leaned on technology to crack the case. Cleveland police received assistance from the Cleveland Division of Police Real Time Crime Center, and officers used camera footage from that unit to identify the man as the robbery-attempt suspect, police said. He was treated at a hospital for his own injuries before being released into custody.
Suspect Booked Into County Jail, Charges Pending
Once released from medical care, the suspect was arrested and transported to Cuyahoga County jail, where charges remained pending as of the report. Fourth District detectives will continue handling the investigation, according to the same account.
The case echoes a deadlier episode from Sept. 29. A 22-year-old Cleveland man, identified as Tayvon Austin, died after he was shot multiple times during an attempted robbery while meeting people to sell a vehicle, according to cleveland.com. That shooting happened at about 5:30 p.m. in the 1000 block of East 71st Street, and a second man, 21, was found nearby with a gunshot wound to the leg and taken to a hospital in stable condition, the outlet reported. Accounts of that earlier case differ on the age of the man who died in the vehicle: cleveland.com reported he was 22, while a Yahoo News account of the same incident described the man inside the vehicle as 23 and said he was taken to a hospital in critical condition before his death.
Robberies Have Been Trending Down Citywide
The Tuesday night incident comes amid a broader decline in violent crime across Cleveland. A mid-December report from Mayor Justin Bibb's administration found that robberies citywide had declined 24%, and cleveland.com reported that Cuyahoga County recorded 166 homicides in 2025, down from 178 the year before.
No further details on the suspect's identity, exact charges, or how the Martin Luther King Jr. Drive crash call relates to the Buckeye Road robbery report have been released. Fourth District detectives remain in charge of the ongoing investigation.
