COLUMBUS – What appears to have started as a confrontation between the occupants of two vehicles on an interstate near downtown ended when the driver of one of them was shot to death and crashed into a house on the East Side Monday morning.
Police say Taquan Sprinkle was in a blue car that was headed eastbound on I-70 when the occupants got into a confrontation with two men in a black SUV as the two vehicles passed the West Side split at about 9:30 a.m., said Sgt. Eric Pilya of the Columbus police Homicide Unit.
The two vehicles continued east, exited at the Miller/Kelton Avenue interchange and drove south on Miller Avenue. Pilya says a suspect in the SUV fired shots at the occupants of Sprinkle’s car just north of Columbus Street and the car ran into a couple of parked vehicles before hitting the front of a home in the 900 block of Miller Avenue.
Sprinkle, 24, had been shot and was taken to Grant Medical Center where he died at 12:53 p.m., Pilya said.
The suspect SUV turned east on Columbus Street and struck a parked car and a telephone pole, where the two unknown male black suspects got out and ran away, Piliya said.
This is the 84th homicide of 2018.