What do we know about the man police say killed a Cleveland officer?

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) – We’re learning more about the man police say fatally shot that Cleveland police officer on the city’s East side Thursday morning.

The suspect, 24-year-old Delawnte Hardy ― who also goes by “Tay” ― was arrested and charged with aggravated murder.

Available public records don’t reflect that Hardy has a criminal history, although police were serving him with a warrant at the time of the incident. Records do indicate he graduated high school in 2017 and attended some college, majoring in business.

Hardy doesn’t appear to be very active on social media. He does, however, claim to be an aspiring artist. On Instagram, he posted some violent drawings ― one showing himself as an emoji holding a gun.

Some of his video reels are hard to understand. One he posted on July 3rd of last year shows him smoking a cigar as he ranted.

“The Lord told David to take off Goliath’s head, we about to take these ni***’s heads off,” Hardy said.

Police say the shooting happened in the 1500 Block of E. 80th St. around 1 a.m. in Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood. Officers were attempting to serve Hardy a warrant for felonious assault. When they arrived, they saw him leaving on this bicycle. They say they tried to stop him, but Hardy fired shots, fatally killing one of the officers.

Now investigators are working to piece things together and reconstruct what happened, but they’ll likely never understand the reason why.

Hardy is expected to be arraigned tomorrow. As for the warrant for felonious assault — we couldn’t find any records of that charge.

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