Columbus police release body camera, 911 calls
The gunshots rang out intermittently outside of Joe’s Pub & Grill on East Dublin Granville Road as Columbus police officers waited, guns drawn, attempting to locate the man who was firing them.
Body camera footage released Tuesday by the Columbus Division of Police shows the roughly more than two minutes that passed in the early hours of Saturday before the armed man — who police identified Monday as Pataskala resident Mark A. Sharpe — emerged in plain sight, firing on officers and prompting them to fire back and strike him multiple times.
“He’s in between cars in the parking lot,” one officer can be heard saying in the footage before gunfire was exchanged in the pub’s parking lot on the city’s Northeast Side. “We really don’t have eyes on him.”
As Columbus police officers Evan Romine and Kenneth Sauer took cover together behind a cruiser, a nearby civilian sheltering with them can be heard saying: “That dude’s probably about to die tonight.”
“Very possibly,” one of them replied. Police dispatchers had received three 911 calls around 12:30 a.m. Saturday — which the division has also now released — in which callers indicated the man was possibly intoxicated and, after he was kicked out of the bar, smashed a window of a vehicle outside, where he retrieved a handgun.
One gunshot is audibly heard in one of the 911 calls, sending the patrons of the pub at 4949 East Dublin Granville Road fleeing to the bathrooms for shelter.
“Oh my God, he just shot in here,” one female caller exclaims. “Everyone get down and get back here now!”
Sharpe, 39, has since been charged with three count of felonious assault for firing at three officers when they responded to the scene of the shooting outside the pub, which is located just west of Hamilton Road.
Also on Monday, Columbus police identified the three officers who reportedly exchanged gunfire with Sharpe as Romine — an eight-year veteran of the division — as well as Sauer and Tamer Khadre, who have each been with the division for four years.
In the body camera footage, a single shot can be heard when the first officers began to approach the gunman outside the bar. The officers, believing the gunman was firing at them, radioed the information to dispatchers and took cover behind their vehicles.
“He’s firing at us,” one of the officers says.
Amid the confusion and with little visibility in the dimly lit parking lot, officers strained to to identify where exactly the armed man was located. More officers continued to arrive on scene, and eventually they determined that he was likely between two vehicles outside the bar.
As shots ring out sporadically, officers can be heard giving verbal commands to the man to put up his hands.
Body and dash camera video shows the suspect fired at least three shots before the spree crescendoed in the violent confrontation with the officers.
After a few minutes pass, the gunman appears to be seen emerging from between the two cars toward one group of officers. One of those officers yells for the man to put his hands up. Instead, the suspect can be seen stopping, assuming a spread-legged stance and pointing his handgun at officers, firing multiple rounds as officers return fire.
Dash camera footage shows him falling to the ground and officers immediately approaching him. Body camera footage from Romine, who can be seen brandishing an assault rifle-type weapon, shows him kicking the gun away from the suspect, sending it sliding under a nearby car.
As the man later identified as Sharpe lies critically wounded on the ground, officers pat him down and one officer attempts to handcuff him. But because Sharpe had a gunshot wound on his arm, officers cannot successfully apply the handcuffs.
No one else was injured, and police reported recovering the gun at the scene.
Footage shows officers rendering medical aid to Sharpe at the scene in accordance with Andre’s Law, a law named for Andre Hill, the 47-year-old man fatally shot in 2020 by then-columbus officer Adam Coy, that requires police officers to give first aid until paramedics arrive. Officers can be seen and heard applying gauze and at least one tourniquet to stop bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds.
Sharpe was initially transported to Mount Carmel East hospital in critical condition, but police said on Monday that Sharpe appeared poised to survive his injuries.
The shooting marks the third instance so far in 2023 that Columbus police officers have fired and struck a suspect, one of which proved fatal.
On Feb. 5, officer Joshua Ohlinger shot Michael Cleveland, 66, after a brief foot chase following an attempted traffic stop on the South Side, potentially paralyzing him for life, according to his attorney. Six days later on Feb. 11, SWAT officers with the Columbus Division of Police fatally shot Andrews, 46, of Athens, in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Grove City while trying to arrest him on warrant for rape.
As it does for all incidents in which a Columbus Division of Police officer discharges a weapon, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is handling the investigation into the shooting and the circumstances that led to it.