Autopsy: Hill shot four times by former officer
The official autopsy report for Andre Hill, a 47-year-old unarmed Black man shot and killed by a former Columbus police officer, shows that Hill was shot four times.
The autopsy report, released Friday, shows Hill was struck in the chest, twice in the right thigh and an additional time in the right leg.
Hill was shot around 1:50 a.m. on Dec. 22 in the garage of a home in Columbus’s northwest side by Adam Coy. Police were responding to a non-emergency call when the shooting took place. Coy and officer Amy Detweiler, who responded with Coy, did not have their body cameras on at the time of the shooting.
Their cameras did capture 60 seconds of video, but no audio, so the shooting was able to be seen. Additional footage showed medical aid was not given to Hill for more than 10 minutes after he was shot. Hill died at a hospital about 30 minutes after the shooting took place.
According to the autopsy report by the Franklin County Coroner’s office Hill died within seconds to minutes.
The autopsy report said the wound that was most significant entered Hill’s left chest area and caused damage to his ribcage, liver, stomach, pancreas and aorta. The report said nearly two liters of blood was found in Hill’s abdominal cavity and pelvic region during the autopsy.
A toxicology report completed as part of the autopsy showed Hill had THC and evidence of cannabis use in his system. He also had a blood alcohol level of .013%, well under the .o8% level at which one is considered impaired in Ohio.
Coy was fired less than a week after the shooting and has since been indicted on charges of murder, felonious assault and dereliction of duty. He posted a $1 million bond in the case, which remains pending in Franklin County Common Pleas Court.
Coy’s next court date is not currently scheduled and a trial in the case will not likely take place until 2022. The Ohio Attorney General’s Office is handling the prosecution.
The case fell under the jurisdiction of the Franklin County Prosecutor’s office, which requested that Yost’s office serve as special prosecutor because the prosecutor’s office was undergoing a transition in leadership around the new year. The Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation
also investigated the shooting in accordance with city policy for shootings involving police.
Michael Wright, a Dayton attorney representing Hill’s family, said the autopsy results showed Hill “suffered tremendously.”
“The autopsy is troubling to the family,” he said. “It shows he died a painful death.”
Wright said the family does take some comfort in knowing Coy has been indicted and remains “cautiously optimistic” that he will be convicted.
Coy’s attorney, Mark Collins, said Coy gave a more than two-hour interview to investigators and believed a silver key ring in Hill’s right hand was a revolver.
“The Supreme Court has said the officers are allowed to make mistakes, if the mistake is reasonable through the lens of a reasonable police officer,” Collins previously told The Dispatch. “Adam Coy was mistaken. He thought the keys were a revolver and he reacted based on his training.”
The dereliction of duty charges Coy faces were also a surprise to Collins, particularly the second count. Yost said Wednesday evening the second count pertains to Coy not warning his fellow officers of a possible danger. Detweiler, the female officer who responded with Coy to the Oberlin Drive call, said in a statement to investigators that Coy yelled, “He has a gun” just prior to the shots being fired.