Published in the Daily Kent Stater on December 12, 1997.


TOLEDO (AP)-The University of Toledo has agreed to pay $1 million to the family of a nursing student who was killed by a campus police officer, according to a report published Thursday.

The family of Melissa Anne Herstrum had filed a negligence lawsuit against the university.

Under the settlement reached Wednesday, the school also agreed to join the Herstrums in opposing any early release attempt by Jeffery Hodge, who pleaded guilty to killing Herstrum.

A telephone message left for university President Frank Horton was not immediately returned Thursday.

But Horton told The Blade that he hopes the settlement "assists in putting to rest this senseless tragedy." Hodge was a 22-year-old rookie with the campus police force when Herstrum was killed Jan. 26, 1992. He admitted to handcuffing and shooting the 19-year-old sophomore 14 times. Her partially clothed body was found the following day face down in the snow at the university's Scott Park campus.

Hodge, 28, pleaded guilty after prosecutors agreed not to pursue the death penalty.

He is serving a life sentence at the Warren Correctional Institution in Lebanon for aggravated murder, kidnapping, and using a handgun in the commission of a felony. He must serve at least 33 years.

Peter Weinberger, a Cleveland lawyer speaking for Miss Herstrum's parents, Alan and Diane Herstrum, said the family pursued the case to learn more about why Hodge killed their daughter and to explain how the university could fail to detect Hodge's shortcomings as a police officer.

"The compensation...in no way alleviates the loss of the family, but it does provide them with some satisfaction in providing compensation for her wrongful death," Weinberg said. "The Herstums could not believe there wasn't something the university could have done in terms of knowing that Jeffery Hodge was demented."

Weinberger said depositions taken in the case convinced him and the family that Hodge was poorly supervised during his probationary period, and that his supervisors should have known that he had a super-cop" complex.

He said Hodge was allowed to drive by himself in a patrol car within weeks of being hired, and that another campus officer witnessed Hodge making a false report and informed Joseph Skonnecki, the assistant police chief, but that Skonecki took no action.

Return to University of Toledo police corruption.