South Side man charged with fatal shooting following a minor traffic-crash dispute
A South Side man has been identified by Columbus police as the suspect who fatally shot a man after a dispute over a minor traffic collision Friday morning, police said. Columbus police homicide Sgt. Eric Pilya said 26-year-old Brandon L. Williams, of the South Side, was inside a car that backed out of a driveway and collided with a moving pickup truck just after 8 a.m. on the 600 block of Colton Road. Pilya said it was not immediately known if Williams was driving the vehicle or if someone else was.
Williams and the driver of the pickup truck, 44-year-old Robert M. Muncy, who is the ex-boyfriend of Williams’ mother, got into a dispute following the minor collision. The dispute led to shots being fired, police reported. Williams was mortally wounded and died at the scene, Pilya said. Police said Muncy fled on foot and was caught by police a short time later behind Buckeye Middle School, at 2950 S. Parsons Ave., which is about a block from his home address listed in court records. The school did not have students in session on Friday, so no lockdown was necessary.
Muncy, who is listed in court records as 6-foot, 285 pounds, was taken to a local hospital for medical evaluation after reportedly complaining of shortness of breath from running from the scene of the shooting. He was later cleared and immediately arrested by police on the murder charge.
A felony arraignment for Munch on the murder charge was scheduled for Saturday morning, according to Franklin County Municipal Court records. Court records indicate Muncy pleaded guilty April 6 to a domestic violence charge in connection with an incident on March 8. But a charge of assault also filed in the March incident and pending charges of domestic violence and assault from another incident in October 2019 were all dismissed under a plea agreement, according to court records. Judge Ted Barrows sentenced Muncy to 180 days in jail, but the sentence was suspended, apparently due to the COVID-19 crisis, and he was placed on probation until 2022.
A warrant for Muncy’s arrest on domestic violence and assault was issued in connection with another incident July 2 on West Spring Street, but that case was marked closed in court records. Williams’ death in the shooting Friday would have been the 136th homicide in the city so far this year, based on prior press releases by police. But in the news release Friday night identifying Muncy as the murder suspect, detectives called Williams’ death the 137th homicide of 2020.
That suggests that detectives are treating what they called the “suspicious” discovery of a body found in a shallow grave Thursday afternoon in a wooded area near a homeless camp in Franklinton as the city’s 136th homicide. Police had not officially announced that nor the identity of the body as of late Friday night. bbruner@dispatch.com @bethany_bruner