Daveonte Dixon will soon learn how many decades he is facing in prison for shooting two Mifflin Township police officers.
Dixon, 23, pleaded guilty in June to one count of attempted murder and five counts of felonious assault on a police officer. Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Carl Aveni will sentence Dixon on Monday, Aug. 17
. The minimum sentence Dixon can get is 30-35½ years in prison. The maximum is nearly 100 years.Aveni will have three different memos to review and use to make his determination about whether Dixon will have any chance at walking out of prison. Dixon will not be eligible for early release or parole.
On May 28, 2025, Dixon shot the two officers after running from the front passenger seat of a car that was pulled
over for a traffic stop. One of the officers was struck nine times, with one of the bullets barely missing hitting his heart and major arteries. The other officer was struck in the hand and arm, causing permanent damage.
Dixon eluded police for nearly two days with the help of at least nine other people before firing at Franklin County Sheriff's deputies who had tracked him to an apartment in Obetz. Dixon then shot himself but survived his injuries.
Dixon is being represented by the Franklin County Public Defender's office. Public Defender Mitch Williams said a memo would be filed on Dixon's behalf, but it had not been filed by the end of the county Clerk of Courts business day on Friday, Aug. 14.
In a memo filed Aug. 7, Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Steve Schott said Dixon is among the small percentage of people who deserve to spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
Dixon, Schott wrote, may say he feels remorse for what he did, but his actions do not comport with that.
On March 4, deputies at the Franklin County jail found two handmade drawings in Dixon's cell, Schott wrote. One of the drawings has the phrase "It ain't fun when I got the gun" with a rabbit sticking its tongue out and a shattered Mifflin Township police shield visible. The picture also includes a gun firing a bullet of the same make and caliber as the weapon Dixon used in May 2025.
The drawings were found before Dixon pleaded guilty.
"This is how he truly felt then and does now. Not remorse. He is mocking the officers and police in this drawing," Schott wrote. "The real sorrow he feels is that police caught him."
The other drawing shows the scales of justice balanced with a die labeled "risk" on one side and money labeled "chances" on the other. The drawing also has the names of the nine people charged with assisting Dixon in avoiding capture on a mousetrap with a piece of cheese.
The mousetrap appears to have the words "Never told, Never have nor will," written on the edges.
"This photograph accurately captures the mind of a man who was gifted a second chance at life and, instead, chose lethal violence against police," Schott wrote. "He fired on six human beings who, as a calling, chose a life of service."
A memo from an attorney representing the two Mifflin Township officers said the drawings are designs for tattoos Dixon intends to have inked on him in prison.
"He is not merely unremorseful; he has reflected upon his crime with braggadocio and pride. Pride in cowardly viciousness is an objective evil," John Litle, the attorney representing the officers, wrote in a memo to Aveni.
At the time of the May 2025 shooting, Dixon was on probation in two other cases. One of those cases involved convictions for aggravated robbery, having a weapon while a convicted felon, and unlawful possession of a dangerous ordnance for possessing a fully automatic firearm, court records say.
"Such conduct represents an individual who was given a second chance and chose to try to kill police officers. He cannot be given another chance to harm someone else," Schott wrote.
Dixon has a suspended prison sentence of 11 years that he could receive in the aggravated robbery case. Judge Kim Brown, who oversaw that case, will hold a hearing after Dixon's sentencing to determine what to do about that potential prison time. Brown could order any prison time she sentences Dixon to as consecutive to Aveni's sentence or have it be served simultaneously with Aveni's sentence.
Reporter Bethany Bruner can be reached at bbruner@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Shooter mocks Mifflin Twp. police in jail drawings before sentencing
