A man died Saturday afternoon after an officer-involved shooting with Genoa Township police near Sharon Woods Metro Park in north Columbus. No law enforcement officers were injured, and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation has taken over the case.
The shooting happened after Genoa Township police got a call about a sexual assault and a possible suspect with a gun. Multiple law enforcement agencies helped carry out a traffic stop of the suspect's vehicle near the park area, where the encounter quickly turned deadly. By the time the scene was secured, the person who had been shot was later pronounced dead.
James McMillin said he believes one Genoa Township police officer fired the shot, and that officer will be placed on standard administrative leave while investigators sort out what happened. That leaves a key gap in the public record: officials have not said which officer fired or what exactly happened in the brief encounter before shots were fired.
BCI said its investigations and crime scene units responded to the scene at the request of the Genoa Township Police Department. The department is also continuing a separate investigation into the original sexual assault report, meaning two parallel inquiries are now moving at once — one into the shooting itself and another into the call that brought police there in the first place.
For now, the most important next step is the state investigation. It will determine how the stop unfolded, who fired, and whether the response matched the threat officers believed they were facing when they moved in near Sharon Woods Metro Park.
