LEWISTOWN — The caller was calm, rational, unhurried.
“This is Evan Hoffman,” the voice tells the Logan County 911 dispatcher. “I have just shot a friend who was trespassing inside my house.”
The friend of whom Hoffman spoke was Branden Doseck, a Jackson Center teenager who later was pronounced dead at Mary Rutan Hospital in Bellefontaine as a result of the gunshot wound.
“He is breathing, but he’s going into shock right now,” Hoffman said, again his voice showing no trace of panic or excitement. “He was trespassing inside my home.”
Later in the six-minute, 58-second audio recording of the 911 call, Hoffman admits that he was hosting a drinking party at his rural home at 6089 county Road 21 in western Logan County and that he had thrown Doseck out of the party sometime before the 911 call, which was logged at 3:53 a.m. Sunday.
“I already told him to go home and he came back with three or four of his friends inside a Honda car, of some sort,” Hoffman, 20, coolly told the dispatcher. “They appear to have left at some point, however, and there is a bunch of people at my house that I do not want here.”
Hoffman said on the recording that Doseck had broken down a door to the house and was trying to fight Hoffman.
“He was inside my home and I shot him with a deer slug,” Hoffman said.
After telling the dispatcher that Doseck had been shot through the left abdomen, he offered the dispatcher a more detailed assessment.
“Let me see here,” a composed Hoffman told the dispatcher. “It looks … it doesn’t look to be fatal, but there is some stuff sticking out of him. He is definitely breathing, though.”
When the dispatcher asked if Hoffman had been drinking, he said, “Yes, I have. We were at a party together and he decided to come back to my party after I told him to get out,” Hoffman said, “and, so, I figured that it would be nice to be honest with you guys.
“I am 20, and I am underage, and I will accept the penalties regarding that,” he added, “but he was in my house and we need an ambulance.”
Doseck, 16, was taken by squad from the county Road 21 residence to Mary Rutan Hospital where he was pronounced dead by the medical staff.
Several times during the call, there are audible sighs from Hoffman and some commotion in the background, but the only time Hoffman voiced any emotion was when the dispatcher told him to remain on the phone with her.
“I’m staying here, I’m staying here,” Hoffman said tersely of her reminder, but was otherwise was polite and collected throughout the nearly seven-minute call. He even went as far to correctly spell Doseck’s last name for the dispatcher.
Initial reports indicate that Hoffman fired another shot into a crowd of partygoers gathered on his front porch and that two suffered minor injuries but refused treatment.
Deputies who were called to the scene arrested Hoffman on seven counts of furnishing alcohol to underage persons, seven counts of permitting underage persons to consume alcohol, and six counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
He was taken to the Logan County Jail on Sunday morning, where he was being held in lieu of $13,000 bail.
The shooting case was turned over to the Logan County Prosecutor’s Office on Monday and could be taken before a grand jury for possible further charges.
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