COLUMBUS, Ohio – A White Ohio police officer was charged with murder on Wednesday in the latest fallout following the December shooting death of Andre Hill, a 47-year-old black man, the state attorney general said.
Former Columbus police officer Adam Coy was indicted by a Franklin County grand jury for murder following an investigation by the Ohio Attorney General’s office. The charges faced by Coy, a 19-year-old veteran of the force, also include failure to use his body’s camera and failure to tell the other officer that he believed Hill posed a danger.
Coy will plead not guilty to the charges, his lawyer, Mark Collins, said Wednesday night.
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Coy and another policeman responded to a neighbor’s non-emergency call after 1 am on December 22 about a car in front of his home on the northwest side of the city that was working, then hung up and called again, according to a copy of the call launched in December.
Images from the police body camera showed Hill emerging from a garage and holding a cell phone in his left hand seconds before he was shot dead by Coy. There is no audio because Coy did not activate the body camera; an automatic “look back” feature captured the footage without audio.
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Moments after Hill was shot dead, other images show that two other Columbus officers rolled Hill over and put handcuffs on him before leaving him alone again. None of them, according to the released footage, offered any first aid, although Hill was barely moving, moaning and bleeding while lying on the garage floor.
“In this case, the citizens of Franklin County, represented by the individual jurors, found a probable cause for believing that Mr. Coy committed a crime by shooting Andre Hill to death,” Attorney General Dave Yost told a news conference at night Wednesday.
He added: “Truth is justice’s best friend, and the grand jury here found the truth.”
Coy had a long history of complaints from citizens. He was fired on December 28 for failing to activate the body camera before the confrontation and for failing to provide Hill with medical help.
Coy will fight the charges based on case law that examines such incidents of use of force through the eyes of a “reasonable policeman,” Collins said, adding that his client fully cooperated with investigators and “honestly believed he saw a silver revolver.” reaching the individual’s right hand. “
The union representing the Columbus police officers issued a brief statement saying it will wait to see how the case unfolds.
Coy “will have the ability to present facts on his behalf in a trial, just like any other citizen,” said Keith Ferrell, president of the local FOP. “At that time, we will see all the facts for the first time with the public as the process unfolds.”
Coy’s charge comes just days after Columbus police chief Thomas Quinlan was forced to leave after Mayor Andrew Ginther said he had lost confidence in his ability to make the necessary changes in the department.
Ginther, a Democrat who made changes to the police department one of his top priorities, welcomed the news of Coy’s accusation.
“The prosecution does not lessen the pain of his tragic death for Hill’s loved ones, but it is a step towards justice,” he said.
Quinlan himself strongly criticized Coy and the actions of other officers and said that Hill would be alive today if the police helped him on the spot.
Hill’s family, while still mourning Hill’s death, is happy with the prosecution, which they see as a first step, said attorney Michael Wright.
Andre Hill, shot dead by Columbus police on December 22, is honored in a shirt worn by his daughter, Karissa Hill, on Thursday, December 31, 2020, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo / Andrew Welsh-Huggins)
“It is important to start holding these officers accountable for their bad deeds and actions,” said Wright. “I think it will go a long way for one, the public to trust law enforcement, for two, to potentially change the behavior of police officers and their interaction with individuals who should not be killed or should not withstand excessive force.”
This is the second Columbus police officer recently charged with murder. Former squad deputy officer Andrew Mitchell was accused in state court in 2019 of fatally shooting a woman during a secret prostitution investigation in 2018.
Mitchell is also federally accused of forcing women to have sex with him under threat of imprisonment, pressuring others to help cover up crimes and lying to federal investigators when he said he never had sex with prostitutes. He pleaded not guilty.
Hill’s case was prosecuted by Republican Yost, the state’s top police officer, whose criminal investigation unit is conducting the investigation.
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Hill’s death came a few weeks after an assistant to the Franklin County sheriff shot and killed Casey Goodson Jr. at his grandmother’s door when relatives said he returned from a dentist’s office with sandwiches for his family.
A US delegate said that deputy Jason Meade, a member of a fugitive task force, confronted Goodson outside his home after Goodson, who was not the subject of the fugitive search, passed and pointed a gun at Meade. Meade is white and Goodson was black.