Woman arrested in stabbing at bar
A Hilltop woman was charged with murder late Monday night in the stabbing death earlier of a Near East Side woman.
Ivey Nicole Sankey, 31, of Hilltonia Avenue, was arrested and charged in connection with the slaying of Shirley M. Minnifield, 29, Columbus police said. Sankey was booked into the Franklin County jail Monday night.
Minnifield was stabbed in a fight at 1:43 a.m. Monday outside the Eighty Three Lounge, on the northeast corner of E. 5th and Joyce avenues.
“Some girl, she was up here fighting,” a man told dispatchers in a 911 call. “She’s bleeding.”
The man said club security tried to stop Minnifield’s assailant, but she left in a white car with several other people. The man said he couldn’t describe them and hung up.
Police found Minnifield injured in a nearby parking lot in the 1400 block of E. 5th. She was taken to OhioHealth Grant Medical Center, where she died at 2:23 a.m.
According to Columbus police records, Minnifield had been the victim of four other physical assaults that occurred under various circumstances in recent years.
She also was facing trial in Franklin County Municipal Court on charges stemming from three other incidents: an aggravated menacing charge from 2013, a violation of a protection order from January and an assault charge from Aug. 2. She had been scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 16, according to court records.
In the Aug. 2 incident at an East Side bar, Minnifield was charged with misdemeanor assault after another woman reported “she was attacked leaving a bar and as a result her phone came up missing,” according to a police report.
Minnifield is the 79th homicide victim in the city this year. The same number of victims had been killed in the city by this time last year.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Columbus police homicide squad at 614-6454730 or Crime Stoppers at 614-461-TIPS.