Authorities say LifeSkills graduate was killed in
self-defense.
By Rick McCrabb, Staff Writer
2:08 AM Saturday, December 11, 2010
MIDDLETOWN — Jacob Young was just turning his life around, his mother said.
He had landed a job at a Taco Bell in West Chester Twp. and was trying to deal with his drinking problem.
But on the morning of Aug. 17, Young, 23, formerly of Middletown, was killed after a night of drinking when he fought the boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend in her Miami Twp. apartment.
Young, who didn’t drive, was dropped off at his ex-girlfriend’s residence around 3 a.m. Aug. 17. Jodi Leach, 30, said Young had called her throughout the night. He knocked on her apartment door, then her bedroom window.
She let him in, and the two argued for several minutes, she told police. That’s when Leach’s new boyfriend, William “Billy” Long II, 26, walked out of the bedroom, and following a verbal altercation, got into a wrestling match.
Leach told Miami Twp. police that Young tried several times to “tap out” — or surrender — during the early-morning dispute. Eventually, Young collapsed on the floor. Leach called the Montgomery County dispatch center at 3:36 a.m. and said her “ex had showed up highly intoxicated and was now passed out on the living room floor.”
Paramedics tried to revive Young, who attended Middletown High School and graduated from LifeSkills. He was transported to Sycamore Hospital in Miamisburg where he was pronounced dead at 4:43 a.m.
The Montgomery County Coroner’s Office Oct. 1 ruled Young’s death — due to positional asphyxia — a homicide.
But when a panel of three county prosecutors met for about an hour with Miami Twp. detectives, they decided there was insufficient evidence for felony homicide charges or misdemeanor charges, said Greg Flannagan, spokesman for the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office.
Instead, on Nov. 30, the office determined Young was killed in self-defense or in defense of another, Flannagan said.
Miami Twp. Deputy Chief John DiPietro said the investigation revealed there was “no intent to kill.”
Sometimes, DiPietro said, when people get together, and a heated argument ensues, an “unfortunate event” occurs.
Long told police Young was acting “like a maniac” and he was concerned for the safety of himself, Leach and the three children, ages 11, 10 and 3, in the apartment.
“I would never hurt someone,” he told police. “This is like a nightmare and I’m waiting to wake up.”
Kathy Young, a registered nurse at Knolls of Oxford, a retirement community near Miami University, keeps thinking of the morning of Aug. 17. When her home phone rang around 4 a.m., she refused to answer. It rang again. This time she answered. It was a hospital official saying that her son Jacob was critically injured.
The next 45 minutes — the time it took her to frantically drive from Oxford to Miamisburg — were a blur. She leaned on her faith. Once at the hospital, she walked into a little room and was greeted by a chaplain.
“Are you here for me?” Kathy Young asked.
“Yes,” the chaplain said.
Then she was approached by a doctor.
“He said, ‘He didn’t make it. Your son is dead, not living,’ ” she said. “I don’t even remember how they said it.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.
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