Family of slain Minneapolis man files wrongful death suit over brutal murder by escaped Ohio defendant on supervised release

Yesterday, surviving family members of Ryan Peterson filed suit in the Summit County Court of Common Pleas over Ryan’s brutal murder on August 12, 2022 at the hands of Franklin T. White, who escaped supervision by County officials and two private corporations—Oriana House and Community Support Services, Inc.—that were responsible for “monitoring” and “supporting” Franklin while he was awaiting trial on felony charges for having broken into the childhood home of Ryan’s wife three times on two consecutive days in February of 2022.

Since 2006, Summit County has touted reforms to its criminal justice system by which it has “saved millions of dollars a year by jailing fewer suspects awaiting trials.” Much of these millions end up in the pockets of executives of private corporations like Defendants Oriana House and Community Support Services (“CSS”), who partner with the County to “monitor” and “support” the released defendants both before and after their criminal charges are resolved. Under this “reformed” system, these private corporations are able to charge the released defendants and their health insurers for the monitoring and support services they provide. The executives of these corporations earn annual salaries upwards of 1.2 million dollars, higher than any public employee in Ohio who isn’t an NCAA Division I football or basketball coach, and tout, in their public statements, their ability to “strategically” manage “the administration of community corrections and behavioral health services,” including by “strategically” removing certain would-be inmates from the County’s prison population.

This system also allows even severely mentally ill defendants charged with predatory felonies to receive supervised release and monitoring by these private corporations, in partnership with Summit County’s “Pretrial Services” department.

One such defendant was Mr. White, who, on August 11, 2022 severed his Oriana House-monitored GPS device, left it on the floor of his room at the CSS-owned Edgerton Group Home, and violated the terms of his court-ordered release by driving for more than 11 hours across state lines to Minneapolis, Minnesota where, on the morning of August 12, 2022, he used a battering ram to break down a door to the home of 32-year-old Ryan Peterson and his wife Kassie and brutally stabbed Ryan to death as his wife watched and screamed in horror.

At the time of his escape, Franklin was subject to the maximum level of court-ordered supervision and conditions of pre-trial release, including GPS monitoring by Oriana House pursuant to then-pending felony home-invasion charges under 2911.12(B) and (E) in the Summit County Court of Common Pleas, after he had broken into the Akron home of Kassie’s parents three times over two days in February of 2022 in a severely impaired mental state, stating that he was there to see Kassie, who was his former classmate at Firestone High School.

Franklin’s medical records show that in the months leading up to his escape, while under the supervision of Oriana House, CSS, and the County, he was suffering severe and escalating mental illness and psychosis, including schizophrenia, the symptoms of which included “auditory and command hallucinations,” “delusions, and agitation,” causing him to go missing for days on end, and to miss medication and treatment appointments, including in the weeks and days leading up to his escape.

In June of 2022, only two months before his escape, Franklin violated his no-contact order by sending an electronic message to Kassie inviting her to call him. Kassie immediately reported this violation to an Assistant Summit County Prosecutor assigned to prosecute the charges against Franklin, who advised Kassie to obtain a protection order against Franklin in Minnesota that proved to be completely worthless.

Despite the obvious, severe, and longstanding deterioration of Franklin’s mental state, despite his dangerous obsession with Kassie that was an overt symptom of his severe mental illness that had caused him to commit the felony that led to his court-ordered supervision in the first place, and despite having undertaken the responsibility to supervise and monitor Franklin’s pretrial release for the benefit of “millions of dollars” that would have otherwise been spent on a system that would have ensured his victims’ safety, not a single person from Oriana House, Community Support Services, the County, or otherwise, made any effort to notify or warn Kassie or any of her family members of Franklin’s escape from their supervision. This failure occurred despite that numerous officials of Oriana House, CSS, and the County knew, as of no later than 2:23 PM EST on August 11, 2022, that Franklin had severed his ankle monitor and was on the loose. It did not occur to a single one of these officials to ensure that someone notified Franklin’s known targets of this severe danger to their safety, thereby permitting Franklin to make the eleven-plus hour drive to Minneapolis, break into the Petersons’ home, and brutally murder Ryan at approximately 7:45 AM CST on the morning of August 12.

“When a governmental body engages with private corporations to save millions of dollars by ‘strategically’ allowing severely mentally ill defendants charged with predatory felonies to avoid incarceration in place of supervised release and ‘monitoring,’ there is an obvious need and duty to implement basic measures to ensure the safety of the known victims and targets of these defendants,” said Peter Pattakos, lead attorney for the Peterson family. “The need and duty to warn Kassie and her immediate family members of Franklin’s escape was especially clear in this case,” Pattakos added. “We hope that the County leaders and corporate executives who are responsible for the failures that foreseeably allowed for this horrific murder to happen meaningfully account for the unimaginable suffering they’ve caused to Ryan’s family and improve their processes so that no family has to suffer like this ever again.”

Attorneys Gregory Gipson, Zoran Balac, and Maryam Assar of the Pattakos Law Firm in Fairlawn, Ohio, also represent the plaintiff family members in this case, No. CV-2024-08-3481, Estate of Ryan Peterson, et al. v. Oriana House, et al. A copy of the filed complaint is available here.