18-year-old woman charged with carjacking, murder of off-duty Cleveland police officer
CLEVELAND, Ohio January 3 2021 An 18-year-old woman was charged Sunday in the fatal shooting of an off-duty Cleveland police officer during a carjacking.
Tamara McLoyd of Garfield Heights is charged with aggravated murder in the Friday shooting of officer Shane Bartek, 25. Police arrested McCloyd Saturday, hours after the shooting.
She is expected to make her first court appearance on Monday. McLoyd is also charged in Nov. 2 armed robbery and a warrant was issued for her arrest on Nov. 9, according to court records.
McLoyd “ambushed” Bartek about 6 p.m. Friday in the parking lot of an apartment complex on Rocky River Drive in the city’s Kamm’s neighborhood, according to police and court records.
Bartek tried to fight off McLoyd’s robbery attempt and she shot him twice in the back, according to court records and police.
McLoyd drove off in Bartek’s car. An ambulance took Bartek to Fairview Hospital, where he died. Surveillance video recorded the shooting, court records say.
Police later spotted Bartek’s stolen car, sparking a high-speed chase involving several suburban police departments. The chase ended when the driver crashed the car into a fence in an apartment complex on East 260th Street and Lakeshore Boulevard in Euclid.
Officers arrested Anthony Butler Jr., 28, who officials say was driving the car during the chase. He is charged in Lyndhurst Municipal Court with fleeing and eluding and receiving stolen property and is jailed on a $5 million bond.
Officials have not said how Butler ended up with the stolen car. Butler has seven theft-related convictions in the last four years, according to court records.
Bartek grew up in Middleburg Heights and was hired as a Cleveland officer in 2019. He worked as a patrol officer in the city’s Fifth District in the city’s northeast corner.
McLoyd is also charged in the Nov. 2 armed robbery of Happy’s Pizza on Detroit Avenue and West 74th Street.
McLoyd and another person walked into the store about 10:30 p.m. and pointed guns at two employees, according to police and court records.
The two robbers forced the two employees into a back room at gunpoint. Court records do not say if anything was stolen.
Investigators tied McLoyd to the robbery via surveillance video from cameras inside and outside the store, according to court records. Detectives also searched the phone of a co-defendant in the case and found photos of McLoyd wearing the same clothing as she did during the robbery while she clutched a stolen gun, also believed to be used during the robbery, according to court records.
Prosecutors issued a warrant for her arrest one week later, but she wasn’t arrested on the warrant until Saturday, according to court records.
The carjacking and shooting came days after a 27-year-old man was robbed at gunpoint on Christmas in the same parking lot where Bartek was shot and killed, according to city records. That case remains unsolved.
Bartek’s slaying is the second fatal shooting of a Cleveland police officer in less than two years. On Sept. 3, 2020, Detective James Skernivitz was shot and killed during an undercover drug investigation. A police informant, Scott Dingess, was also killed in the shooting.
