Just before his body was found Tuesday, authorities in Huber Heights responded to a home on Shull Road where two boys, one being Holt’s 14-year-old son, had been tied up in a home invasion. The home had been ransacked, according to 9-1-1 calls.
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Springfield Police Chief Lee Graf declined to go into detail about how Holt Jr. died when asked at a press conference Wednesday but did say officers are seeking information from the public.
“We are asking anyone to contact us if they have knowledge of the whereabouts or if they had contact with Mr. Holt,” Graf said, “particularly between the hours of 11 p.m. Monday and 9 a.m. Tuesday.”
Springfield police are aware of the home invasion in Huber Heights and are working with the police department in that city, Graf said.
Springfield officers are looking to see if there are links between the two incidents, he said. Right now they are being treated as two separate incidents, but that could change, Graf said.
“We want to try to have a good timeline and piece together where Mr. Holt was upon leaving that area home at 11 at night to when his body was found,” Graf said.
The Clark County Coroner’s Office is working the case but might not have information on Holt’s death until next week, the office said.
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According to the 9-1-1 call made by the one of the boy’s mother, Holt was last seen by the boys around 11 p.m. Monday. She said in the call that two men broke into the Shull Road home, tied up the boys and ransacked the house around 4 a.m.
“The house is a mess. They just tied my kids up. They untied themselves and called me,” the woman said in the call.
Holt Jr. lived in Huber Heights but has strong ties to Springfield, including living in the city for a number of years, Graf said.
“Mr. Holt has ties and roots in Springfield,” Graf said. “That would be a fair assessment.”
He also has a past in Virgil Mabra Park, according to police records. In 2013, Holt was playing dice in the park — also known as Rose Park — when two men pulled up to his car, pointed a semi-automatic weapon at him, handcuffed him and made him get in the back of their car, police said at the time.
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Police said during that incident, one of Holt’s children walked home from school to find Holt being held with a gun to his head while the men demanded money. The boy said his father told him to run after the men pointed a gun at the boy, then the men forced Holt back into their car, according to police.
Holt then took the men to a storage unit, where he told them he had some money stored, according to police. Investigators said the men took thousands of dollars from the storage unit then abandoned the man.
Holt’s murder is the fourth in Springfield since March. Graf said the department is fighting violent crime, but it is impossible to predict where the next incident might take place.
“The biggest thing is to always remember that is affecting lives. Families. Neighbors,” Graf said. “We deal with all of them seriously and do the best we can to try to find out what happened.”
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