COLUMBUS – Within an hour of a call for action and peace by city leaders, Columbus saw its 130th homicide of the year as an unusually violent period of a few days added to the toll of a year that has already been one of the deadliest in history on the city’s streets.
A person of interest is being questioned in the shooting death of a 29-year-old man at a home on the South Side.
Homicide Unit Sgt. Stanley Latta says Brandon Meeks was found, along with a second victim, inside a home in the 200 block of Barthman Avenue at 3:25 Monday afternoon and Meeks died at the scene.
The second man, whose name was not released, was transported to Grant Medical Center and was expected to survive, Lattta said.
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The shooting happened less than an hour after a plea “action and for peace” from Columbus police Chief Kim Jacobs, who asked the community to help police combat rising violent crime by reporting people with guns or disturbances that could turn violent more quickly, before they become homicides.
“We need community members to call us and let us know when they believe that somebody’s got a gun, maybe keep it from being taken out of the house,” Jacobs said. “We’ve got parents that can help us, we’ve got community members that can help us with encouraging people to leave their guns at home.”
We cannot forget that the people who have died by gun violence are not statistics. They were fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, people who shopped beside us in grocery stores and sat next to us at churches and mosques. And we cannot lose track of the loss these murders have left behind for the families and people in our neighborhoods. –Mayor Andrew Ginther
Mayor Andrew Ginther issued a statement in which he recommended more community members step forward to mentor young people.
He also expressed optimism that his administration’s Comprehensive Neighborhood Safety Plan, which uses the resources of the police and Columbus Public Health to focus on “intervention and prevention.”
“Everyone has a role to play,” he wrote.
Ginther’s 2018 city operating budget calls for funding the Division of Police at its current staffing level and includes requests for additional funds for overtime for anti-crime efforts but not for additional officers.
Jacobs says the city needs to address what she called the interlocking problems of violent crime and the drug addiction. She says the opiate crisis in Ohio has led to turf wars among gangs that are being settled with firearms, as are many other disputes.
There have been 11 cases of multiple homicides in Columbus this year, compared with 4 in 2016 and 2 in 2015, Jacobs said.
While most violent crime is on the decline, Jacobs says the number of homicides have gone up in Columbus and some other major U.S. cities.
“It’s the indiscriminate shooting, it’s the number of bullets that are being fired, it/’s the types of weapons that are being used, and the angst that’s driving some of the groups to fight with each other,” Jacobs said.
The number of murders in Columbus in 2017 is approaching the record of 139, set in 1991, and is already higher than the 106 recorded last year.