HANCOCK COUNTY — When officials from the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department and Greenfield Police Department received word Tuesday, Aug. 24, that a person sought for questioning in a homicide might be heading to Indiana from Ohio, they sprang into action and were able to help apprehend him.
According to police reports, Noel Coles Jr., 48, who is from the Dayton, Ohio, area, is a person of interest in a homicide in neighboring Clark County. He was considered armed and dangerous.
“Ohio detectives were able to let us know a likely route the suspect was driving, a vehicle description, and warned us the suspect was armed,” said Capt. Robert Harris, the public information officer for the sheriff’s department.
Local law enforcement continually communicated with Ohio authorities throughout the day. Using cellular data, officers with the sheriff’s department, GPD and the Indiana State Police were able to locate and stop the suspect in his vehicle several hours later, at about 5:15 p.m., near the Hancock County line on Interstate 70.
He was taken into custody without incident. A female and a dog were in the car with him, police said.
Coles was booked into the Hancock County Jail on a warrant from another county. Clark County authorities were expected to come to Greenfield to pick him up.
The Clark County, Ohio, Regional Dispatch center received a call earlier Tuesday from a person who claimed to have been on the phone with a woman when the woman screamed and the phone cut out.
Deputies were sent to investigate. They found Jackie Hall Coles, 44, dead inside a home. Police soon identified her estranged husband, Noel Coles Jr., as a person of interest and immediately asked the public for help locating him.
Clark County Sheriff’s Office said the woman had filed a protection order against Coles on Aug. 5. In the order, the woman wrote her husband had threatened to kill her multiple times over a period of a few weeks. She wrote that the threats escalated the evening of Aug. 4.
