Lonnie Sloan

Case Summary

On December 2, 1990, Roger Schwirck, a Ph.D. philosophy student at The Ohio State University on a teaching scholarship, was brutally attacked after walking a female friend to her home. Roger, who was returning to his dormitory, was hit in the head from behind with a concrete block by Lonnie Sloan. Sloan then kicked Roger in the head repeatedly and left him for dead in an alley. Roger was later found and was taken to the hospital. He would never regain consciousness and would spend the next eight years in a coma before his death. Sloan was convicted of felonious assault and robbery on August 2, 1991. The case was reopened in 2001 after Roger’s death. The prosecutor’s office allowed Sloan to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter, and he was given no additional prison time.