Christopher Heben: Shooting Claim, Acquittal, and Haiti Arrest

Christopher Heben is a former U.S. Navy SEAL from Ohio who became a national news figure in 2014 after reporting he had been shot by three men in a suburban shopping plaza parking lot. Police concluded the story was fabricated and charged him with two misdemeanors, but a jury acquitted him in April 2015 after less than 35 minutes of deliberation. He later changed his name to Christopher McKinley and, in 2019, was among a group of armed American veterans detained in Haiti during a disputed private security operation.

The 2014 Shooting in Bath Township

On the evening of March 28, 2014, Heben told Bath Township, Ohio police he had been shot in the lower abdomen during a confrontation with three men in the parking lot of the Mustard Seed Market and Cafe at West Market Plaza. He described a dark, low-riding sports car with tinted windows and a rear spoiler, said he chased the vehicle in his Ford F-150, then realized he was going into shock and drove himself to the Bath Township Fire Department.¹²

He had, in fact, been shot. Doctors at Akron General Medical Center treated him for a gunshot wound to the abdomen. What police disputed was where and how it happened.

Why Police Said the Story Didn’t Add Up

Investigators found no evidence the shooting occurred where Heben said it did. Surveillance cameras at the plaza and along his claimed chase route captured no sign of him, his truck, or a car matching his description. His cell phone was pinging a tower near his home in Medina at the time, not one near the shopping plaza. No witnesses came forward, and two Bath Township officers parked about 65 feet from the alleged scene said they heard and saw nothing.³⁴

There were no shell casings, no blood, and no shattered glass at the site. The bullet removed from Heben’s body did not match the registered firearm he handed over to police. Bath Township Police Chief Michael McNeely said the shooting “didn’t happen in our township,” while acknowledging that Heben had been shot somewhere.²

Charges and the 2015 Acquittal

On September 3, 2014, Heben was charged in Akron Municipal Court with first-degree falsification, carrying up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine, and second-degree obstructing official business, carrying up to 90 days and a $750 fine. Prosecutors alleged he had lied about the circumstances and location of the shooting and wasted investigative resources.²

Heben later said the charges cost him “seven figures” in business within 72 hours. The Montrose Auto Group, which had built a “No Customer Left Behind” advertising campaign around his military image, moved quickly to distance itself.⁵⁶

Trial began March 31, 2015. Deputy Prosecutor Craig Morgan argued that Heben had shot himself in the stomach to attract attention and then invented the three assailants. Morgan walked jurors through the cell phone records, the surveillance gaps, and the testimony of three Bath Township officers who had been in or near the parking lot and observed nothing. He acknowledged the difficulty of prosecuting a “heroic military veteran” in a case with no “tangible victim.”⁵⁷

Defense attorney James Burdon attacked the reliability of the state’s evidence. He argued that cell tower pings cannot pinpoint a person’s exact location, a point the prosecution’s own analyst conceded. He suggested the nearby officers had simply missed a low-speed incident, blamed shock for inconsistencies in Heben’s early statements, and pointed out that police never tested Heben’s hands for gunshot residue.⁸⁹

The jury returned not-guilty verdicts on both counts on April 1, 2015, after deliberating less than 35 minutes.¹ Where and how Heben was actually shot was never established. Police said they had no working theory.

Military Service and Media Career

Heben was born in 1969 and enlisted in the Navy in 1996. He completed the BUD/S pipeline and was assigned to SEAL Team 8, deploying to Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq as a combat medic, sniper, and intelligence analyst before leaving combat in 2006. He later worked for Blackwater and trained as a physician assistant licensed in Ohio.¹⁰

After the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, Heben built a public profile as a Special Operations commentator on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN, and NPR. He appeared in documentaries on Discovery, History, and Animal Planet, ran a company called SEAL Team Consulting that marketed SWAT training and apparel, and co-authored a memoir titled Undaunted: Life’s Toughest Battles Are Not Always Fought in a War Zone.¹⁰¹¹

Forgery Convictions and Earlier Record

The 2014 case was not Heben’s first legal trouble. In April 2007, the Lake County Narcotics Unit began investigating him for writing fraudulent prescriptions while working as a physician assistant for a doctor in Alliance, Ohio. Investigators concluded he had written 16 fake prescriptions for anabolic steroids between July 2006 and March 2007.¹²

He pleaded no contest to three counts of forgery in Lake County Common Pleas Court and was found guilty. He asked for treatment instead of jail, but Judge Vincent Culotta denied the request after learning Heben had misled a court-ordered psychiatrist by concealing that he had also forged prescriptions for friends. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail, community service, and probation.¹²

The Ohio State Medical Board suspended his physician assistant license in 2008 and extended the suspension indefinitely in 2009. He was reprimanded again in 2012 for missing drug screenings, though a medical board report that year concluded he had no drug or alcohol dependency. His license was reinstated around 2018.¹³ As a convicted felon, he was barred from possessing firearms until 2011, when a Medina County judge restored his gun rights.¹⁰

Court records also show earlier arrests. In 1990, before his military service, Heben was arrested in Lakewood, Ohio, for theft and aggravated menacing and received a 30-day jail sentence. In 1993 and 1994 he was arrested in Westlake for telecommunications harassment and pleaded guilty to two first-degree misdemeanors in Cleveland involving drug-related deception and illegal processing of prescriptions.¹⁰

Name Change and 2019 Arrest in Haiti

Sometime after the acquittal, Heben legally changed his name to Christopher McKinley. He continued working in security consulting through a firm called the Invictvs Group, which he described as a consortium of U.S. special operations veterans.¹³

On February 17, 2019, McKinley was arrested in Port-au-Prince alongside four other Americans, two Serbian nationals, and a Haitian driver. Haiti National Police stopped the group near the Central Bank as they traveled in two unmarked vehicles without license plates and seized automatic rifles, pistols, drones, and satellite phones.¹⁴

The group’s account of their mission shifted. One team member, former SEAL Christopher Michael Osman, initially said they had been recruited to evacuate wealthy Haitians; the stated mission then became providing personal security for a Haitian-American businessman, Josue “Josh” Leconte, who claimed to be signing a multimillion-dollar infrastructure contract at the Central Bank. Central Bank Governor Jean Baden Dubois denied any such contract or business relationship existed.¹⁴

Haitian opposition lawmakers accused the men of being mercenaries involved in a plot against then-Prime Minister Jean Henry Céant or an attempted electronic theft of $80 million from a government oil fund on behalf of President Jovenel Moïse. The men denied the allegations. The U.S. Embassy intervened, Haiti’s Justice Minister authorized their transfer to American custody, and they flew to Miami, where the FBI and Department of Homeland Security interviewed them but filed no charges.¹⁴¹⁵

McKinley has continued to operate the Invictvs Group since returning to the United States, at a lower public profile than during his years as a cable news commentator.

1
Akron Beacon Journal. Jury Finds Former Navy SEAL Not Guilty
2
CNN. Ohio Navy SEAL Charges
3
Akron Beacon Journal. Police: Navy SEAL Made Up Shooting
4
Navy Times. Ohio Police: Former SEAL Lied About Shooting
5
Cleveland.com. Former Navy SEAL Acquitted at Trial
6
Cleveland Scene. Former Navy SEAL and Auto Dealership Spokesman Lied About Shooting
7
Cleveland.com. Three Police Officers, Cellphone Records at Trial
8
Cleveland Scene. Jury Acquits Chris Heben in Trial About Lying About Bath Township Shooting
9
Navy Times. Former SEAL Found Not Guilty of Lying About How He Was Shot
10
Cleveland Scene. Who Shot Chris Heben? The Strange Tale of a Former Navy SEAL
11
Amazon. Undaunted by Christopher Mark Heben
12
Cleveland.com. Ex-SEAL Accused of Lying About Shooting
13
Columbus Dispatch. Was Controversial Ex-Navy SEAL Among Veterans Arrested in Haiti?
14
Miami Herald. U.S. Mercenaries Arrested in Haiti
15
Akron Beacon Journal. Trouble Keeps Finding Veteran