Exclusive: Police called to Amy Acton’s Bexley home in 2013 — daughter worried parents ‘were going to get into some type of altercation’
Police responded to the Bexley home of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton more than a decade ago after her teenage daughter called authorities, worried that her parents “were going to get into some type of altercation,” according to a police report.
The report raises questions about Acton’s carefully cultivated public persona as the Democratic former director of Ohio’s Department of Health from February 2019 to June 2020 prepares to face off against Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, a billionaire entrepreneur and Cincinnati native, in November’s gubernatorial election.
According to the report obtained by Ohio News, at 12:20 a.m. on June 16, 2013, Bexley police were dispatched to a home on Pleasant Ridge regarding a domestic disturbance. While they were diverted en route, a Capital University Police officer providing backup responded to the home and relayed the information to Bexley police.
According to a police report, Acton’s 16-year-old daughter returned home from a party intoxicated. Acton notified the girl’s father — her ex-husband, Douglas Beech — who later arrived at Acton’s home.
The daughter “apparently did not like this and thought her parents were going to get into some type of altercation,” according to a police report. “Both parents said they were fine and there was no altercation whatsoever.”
Acton was married to Beech, a psychiatrist, from 1989 until their divorce in 2008.
The 2013 call predates a second police call six years later. In August 2019, police responded to a reported “domestic dispute” at Acton’s Bexley home while married to her second husband, Eric Acton, while allegedly drinking, according to reports.
Bexley police dispatched to the home at 9:45 p.m. on the evening in question, wrote in their report that Acton allegedly pulled a mirror off the wall, “shattering the glass,” when she “became upset” because she felt her husband “was antagonizing her,” NBC News reported.
The police report, obtained by NBC, indicated that Acton told the officers that she had been drinking, had taken an unknown amount of prescription drugs, and was about to drive away in her car. Her husband, however, apparently convinced her it was a bad idea.
When a medic at the scene suggested that Acton go to a hospital, she “refused,” NBC News reported. Officers eventually concluded that there wasn’t any evidence of physical violence between Acton and her husband, only a “verbal argument over her extended work hours.”
The campaign responded at the time by saying that the medications referenced in the police report were prescribed by her doctor and that Acton had been taking them for years, and that Acton didn’t need to go to a hospital because there was no “harm, injury, or impairment.” A spokesman for Republican Gov. Mike DeWine previously said the governor was unaware of the 2019 call and that she did not report it to his office.
The Acton and Ramaswamy campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the 2013 police call.
