Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct information about Chris Seelbach’s position with the city when Laketa Cole was on City Council.
From the moment Laketa Cole pulled up to Cincinnati City Hall on her red motorcycle with the license plate “SASSY,” it was clear she wasn’t your typical council member.
She’d go on to win three terms on city council, then nab a post with the powerful Public Utilities Commission of Ohio before settling into a job she loved at the Cincinnati Parks Department.
What nobody could have guessed at the time she was leaving council − or, well, ever − was that Cole was being beaten, threatened and controlled by her boyfriend William L. Cromwell, Cole’s lawyer said in court. That same woman who had helped scores of people through her work was a woman in need of help.
And her relationship would end up making her a criminal.
In the summer of 2020, police in Indiana were implicating Cromwell in a fatal car crash . They wanted Cole to tell them where Cromwell was. She said she didn’t know. They didn’t believe her and arrested her on a charge of hiding a fugitive.