Protection-order homicide case returns to Mansfield Municipal Court for preliminary hearing

Gaberien "Gabe" Clevenger asked a Richland County judge for a protection order against her estranged husband on Jan. 22, 2020. Nineteen days later, she was dead — and the case against Alec Blair is now set for a preliminary hearing in Mansfield Municipal Court, where the record of those nineteen days is about to be aired.

Clevenger, 22, had been staying temporarily at the Shelby home of her friend Lisa Davis, having moved in about two months earlier to escape a troubled marriage. Her estranged husband was Alec Blair, then 21, of Shelby.

The full hearing on her request came Feb. 5, 2020, before Richland County Domestic Relations Court Magistrate Sharon M. May. Clevenger and Blair each appeared without a lawyer. The court denied the request.

Magistrate May wrote that Clevenger "failed to testify to any acts of domestic violence," presenting instead "two marked exhibits of social media messages sent to her by the respondent." Blair acknowledged sending the messages and said he had anger problems and "controlling issues." He told the court, "If I get angry, I won't think to do something, I'll just do it."

Judge Heather Cockley, later summarizing the ruling, said, "Respondent's getting angry does not constitute domestic violence." The ruling concluded, "While respondent wished petitioner dead, he did not threaten to kill petitioner and there was no evidence that petitioner believed respondent was capable of killing her."

The days between

Clevenger disappeared from the Shelby residence around 12:30 p.m. on Feb. 10, 2020, and was reported missing about 4:05 p.m. Five days had passed since the Feb. 5 denial; nineteen since she filed the petition Jan. 22. Prosecutors said Blair stabbed her 14 times in the driveway or at his home at 909 Taylortown Road, east/northeast of Shelby; severe wounds to her neck caused her to bleed to death.

On Feb. 11, Blair led authorities to her body in a wooded area near Bowman Street Road in Jackson Township. He was arrested the same day and charged with murder, with bond set at $1 million and electronic monitoring and no-contact conditions. He first told investigators he punched Clevenger unconscious, dumped her from a vehicle, and smothered her. Detective Andrew Knee wrote in the statement of facts filed with the Mansfield Municipal Clerk of Courts: "During a second interview Sgt. (Rich) Eichinger and I later conducted at the jail … Blair admitting to stabbing Clevenger to death."

After Clevenger's death, Magistrate May was terminated from the domestic-relations court on Feb. 21, 2020, amid public backlash. Judge Cockley, who signed the termination, said she found "no error of law" in May's ruling. Cockley later wrote, "There was no way the Court could have predicted that Petitioner's life would be taken." The court dismissed the protection-order petition as moot and waived costs.

The next hearing

Blair's preliminary hearing is set in Mansfield Municipal Court before Judge Frank Ardis Jr. It is the next open-court step in a case that began with a denied protection order and ended, five days later, with a woman stabbed to death.

The question left for Mansfield and Richland County is what the court's denial meant in those five days — and what the hearing will now lay on the record about it. When the paper a judge signs is not enough to keep a woman alive, what is a protection order actually worth?