Ex-correctional employee gets 30 days for holding teen at gunpoint

9/7/2018
BY ALLISON DUNN
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Bryan Jameson
Bryan Jameson

FINDLAY — A former state correctional employee was sentenced Friday by a Hancock County judge to 30 days in jail for holding a teenage girl at gunpoint on Memorial Day weekend in 2017. 

Former Toledo Correctional Institution employee Bryan Jameson, 45, of the 6100 block of Merle Street in West Toledo was sentenced by Hancock County Common Pleas Judge Reginald Routson for abduction, a third-degree felony. 

He will serve the sentence in the Hancock County jail and was given credit for one day previously served. 

In July, Jameson entered an Alford plea — not admitting guilt. Through plea negotiations, a firearm specification was dismissed.  

On May 26, 2017, Jameson, along with his TCI co-worker Ricci Nolen and her 13-year-old son were camping at Twin Lakes Park Campground near Bluffton. The boy did not return to the campsite and Jameson went looking for his son, fearing the worst, his attorney, Alex Treece wrote in a sentencing memorandum. 

Jameson had years of military and corrections experience, although he also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder — leading to the drastic search for the teenager, Mr. Treece wrote.

During the search, Jameson stopped a vehicle driven by a 16-year-old girl. When Mr. Jameson approached her with a flashlight, which she perceived was attached to a gun, he reportedly yelled at her to open the trunk, or “I will blow your [expletive] head off,” according to Lora Manon, an assistant county prosecutor.

The girl opened her trunk while Mr. Jameson pointed his gun and flashlight at her and repeatedly threatened to shoot her. After looking in her trunk, he told her to go, Ms. Manon previously said.

The victim did not attend Friday’s hearing.

Mr. Treece asked his client be put on community control, while the prosecutor’s office asked for Jameson to serve a 30 month sentence. Jameson faced a maximum of three years in prison.

Judge Routson also ordered Jameson to sell or otherwise dispose of the firearm he used to threaten the teenager. 

Jameson and Ms. Nolen are no longer employed at the correctional facility.