BULLETIN: Site of prosecutor campaign debate becomes homicide scene only hours later

BULLETIN:

Site of prosecutor campaign debate becomes homicide scene only hours later

An epochal event in Cleveland political history — an inner-city debate sponsored by community activists that featured four of the six contestants for Cuyahoga County’s top law enforcement job — became a crime scene only a few hours after the event closed.

Preliminary information obtained by The Real Deal indicate that a disgruntled patron had an angry confrontation with owner Mike Nelson over his take-out chicken order at the Kitchen Restaurant, 6816 Superior Ave.

The customer, reported to be a 32-year old Cleveland man, returned about midnight as the restaurant was closing. Nelson grabbed his shotgun as he saw the man approach with a gun in each hand. After or during a further angry exchange, Nelson shot and killed the intruder.

The rear of the storefront restaurant is home to the Lil Africa Party Center, where only a few hours earlier, community activists and candidates for county prosecutor — including former city law directors Subodh Chandra and Robert Triozzi, former suburban prosecutor James McDonnell, and attorney and police officer Stephanie Hall — engaged in a remarkable discussion about law enforcement.

As we have come to expect, The Plain Dealer has early coverage of the crime but did not deign the community-organized debate newsworthy. Only when they read this will they learn the significance of the crime scene.

Our report on the debate itself will appear here this afternoon.