TIFFIN, Ohio — A Seneca County grand jury has declined to indict any of the officers involved in the fatal shooting of Jeffrey R. Sergent, ruling that the use of deadly force was legally justified, the Seneca County Prosecutor's Office announced in a news release on Thursday, November 12. WTOL 11 reported the decision on Friday morning, November 13.
Source: WTOL 11
Sergent, 43, of Bloomville, was shot and killed on July 7, 2026, after deputies and a Bloomville police officer stopped his truck to arrest him on a felony domestic violence warrant. The grand jury's decision closes the criminal review of the shooting: no deputy and no officer will face criminal charges over his death.
What the grand jury decided
According to the prosecutor's office, the grand jury reviewed the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) investigation into the shooting, along with body-camera video, dash-camera video and audio recordings, before concluding that the officers acted in self-defense and in defense of others. Seneca County Prosecutor Derek W. DeVine's office issued the release on November 12, and the Seneca County Sheriff's Office shared it publicly on Friday.
Source: The Fostoria Free Press
The July 7 stop
The shooting happened at about 10:17 a.m. on July 7 near State Route 67 and Township Road 8 in Seneca County, according to the sheriff's office. Deputies and a Bloomville officer boxed in Sergent's truck, blocking it from the front and the back, and ordered him repeatedly to get out of the vehicle and turn off the engine. He refused. Over roughly nine minutes, Sergent pulled several knives from his pocket while staying inside the truck, rolled up his windows and stopped responding to commands.
A deputy then broke the driver's-side window. The sheriff's office has said the sharp sounds heard on body-camera video before the gunfire were a window-punch tool, an asp baton breaking the window, and Sergent's vehicle striking a guardrail; one deputy was treated for a hand injury caused by the broken glass. Sergent then accelerated rapidly in reverse, nearly hitting officers, struck the guardrail, and drove forward, hitting a deputy. Two deputies fired into the truck as it accelerated toward the deputy in the roadway. Sergent died of gunshot wounds to his arm and head.
A homicide ruling is not a criminal charge
Seneca County Coroner Dr. Zachary West previously ruled Sergent's death a homicide. That is a medical determination about how the death was caused — a death at the hands of another person — and it does not by itself establish criminal liability, which is the separate legal question the grand jury has now answered. The coroner's office also reported on August 27 that toxicology testing on Sergent was positive for amphetamine and methamphetamine.
The family's side
Sergent's wife, Christine, has described him as a husband, stepfather and grandfather who struggled with anxiety, PTSD and other mental-health concerns, and said she called the sheriff's non-emergency line on July 4 — three days before the shooting — seeking help and resources for him. His friend Jacob Kendrick told WTOL he believed Sergent should have complied with the deputies, but that authorities should have been able to de-escalate the situation. Sheriff Fredrick W. Stevens said in a July 14 statement that deputies did not draw their weapons until after Sergent reversed, struck the guardrail and drove toward officers, and noted that deputies knew Sergent had prior Ohio convictions, including third-degree felony escape and assault, linked to a 2018 domestic-violence arrest.
The names of the two deputies who fired have not been released, and Friday's reports did not say whether the deputies placed on administrative leave after the shooting have returned to duty.
What happens next
A grand jury is a panel of citizens that decides whether there is enough evidence to bring criminal charges; its refusal to indict ends the criminal process in this case. The deputies involved were placed on administrative leave while BCI investigated, which is standard practice in Ohio police shootings. No further court step was announced in the prosecutor's release, and the reports did not address any internal review or civil claim. For readers, the practical meaning is narrow but final: the July 7 shooting will not produce a criminal trial in Seneca County.