South Side shooting death is city’s 4th homicide this week
An unidentified male was killed Friday afternoon in Columbus, the second fatal shooting within 48 hours and bookending the Thanksgiving holiday.
The death also marks the fourth homicide this week, in which the city surpassed 2020 in total homicides and 2021 became the deadliest year on record with five weeks remaining.
On Friday afternoon, a male was shot around 12:30 p.m. on the 700 block of Reinhard Avenue on the city’s South Side. He was rushed in critical condition to Ohiohealth Grant Medical Center, but died at 1:15 p.m.
The identity of the victim was being withheld pending notification of family. The death is the 179th homicide in Columbus this year.
Additional details were not immediately available as of mid-afternoon Friday, including whether or not a suspect had been identified.
The male’s death comes less than 48 hours after a 17-year-old was killed in a drive-by shooting late Wednesday afternoon in the Blacklick area on the Far East Side.
Columbus police said Jakwan Lee Radford was shot around 5 p.m. on the 7000 block of Norworth Road between Altoona Drive and Slaybaugh Drive/ Chapel Stone Road. The shooting occurred in the Dorchester residential subdivision located west of North Waggoner Road and north of East Broad Street.
Sgt. David Shimberg, the Homicide Unit supervisor at the scene, told The Dispatch that multiple shots were fired from a vehicle at the victim before the suspect vehicle drove off.
Jefferson Township fire medics transported Radford in critical condition to Mount Carmel East Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:55 p.m.
Radford’s death was the city’s 178th homicide of 2021, surpassing a record for homicides in Columbus for the second year in a row.
As of mid-afternoon Friday, police had not yet officially released a description of the suspect vehicle involved in the shooting. Detectives could be seen Wednesday night canvassing the neighborhood asking residents with Ring doorbells and security cameras if they had any footage of a vehicle speeding through the area at the time of the shooting.
The fatal drive-by shooting came hours after Columbus police announced that an Akron woman turned herself in after police issued a warrant for her arrest Tuesday in the shooting death of her reported boyfriend in Columbus earlier in the week.
Samantha Jo Stevens, 21, has been charged with murder and is being held at the Franklin County jail awaiting her first court appearance on Friday morning in Franklin County Municipal Court, records show.
Columbus homicide detectives accuse Stevens of fatally shooting Eric T. Washington Jr., 23, after the couple had been arguing Monday afternoon outside of an apartment complex on the city’s West Side.
Police were dispatched around 3:50 p.m. Monday to a reported shooting in the 3500 block of Fremont Street, east of South Wilson Road. Washington was found on the kitchen floor inside an apartment with a gunshot wound to his neck, according to an arrest affidavit.
Washington, of the Southeast Side, was rushed to Ohiohealth Doctors Hospital in critical condition, where he died before 5 p.m. Washington’s death was the 176th homicide of the year, which surpassed last year’s record year for homicides when 175 people were killed.
Washington’s death was one of two homicides to occur Monday, ending a two-week lull since the city’s previous homicide — a brazen, assassinationstyle shooting of a man Nov. 8 outside the main entrance to a Target store near Easton Town Center.
Six hours after Washington was shot on Monday, 34-year-old Derrick Samuels Jr., of Milo-grogan, was fatally shot around 9:30 p.m. on the 4300 block of Malin Drive on the city’s Northeast Side. No arrests have been reported in Samuels’ death, the 177th homicide this year.
Stevens was identified as the suspect in Washington’s death after a witness told detectives that he’d seen her drop him off at the apartment before the two began arguing outside, the affidavit states. That witness also said he heard a gunshot, followed by Washington bursting into the apartment to say the woman had shot him.
Multiple witnesses told detectives they saw a gray Jeep Cherokee flee the scene, which detectives later determined matched a vehicle registered to Stevens, according to the affidavit.
Anyone with information regarding any of these homicides is asked to call the Columbus Police Homicide Unit at (614) 645-4730 or Central Ohio Crime Stoppers at (614) 461-TIPS (8477). elagatta@dispatch.com @Ericlagatta