COLUMBUS – Police officials released additional information about a wild and violent scene that played out on the streets of the Short North early Saturday morning.
At approximately 2:40 a.m., officers were responding to a shooting that had been reported at the Guild House restaurant, 624 N. High Street, when more shots were fired a few blocks north, where officers were assisting city officials inspecting food trucks, according to Division of Police Chief Elaine Bryant told reporters at a briefing Monday afternoon.
With the use of body-worn camera video, Bryant and other police officials described how multiple officers discharged their firearms during the second incident, resulting in at least one person being shot by police. A total of 10 people ranging in age from 18 to 27 were shot during the two incidents and 11 firearms were recovered at the scenes, Bryant said.
RELATED: ShotSpotter technology expands on Hilltop
Experts point to a few contributing factors: a general increase in all types of gun violence in recent years, the proliferation of firearms amid lax gun laws, and a political climate unable or unwilling to change the status quo in meaningful ways.
Mayor Andrew Ginther said local officials want to be able to adopt gun control legislation, such as universal background, checks, red flag laws that prohibit potentially violent individuals from acquiring firearms, and bans on accessories like “bump stocks,” which adapt semi-automatic weapons so they can fire as rapidly as automatic weapons, but find themselves stymied by state lawmakers and officeholders who ban local jurisdictions from adopting their own laws.
“We have a simple request: Get out of our way. Let us lead at the local level to enact basic, common-sense gun safety legislation” he said.
It was difficult for police to determine how many people had been shot during the incident because many victims self-transported to hospitals and the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation was investigating the officer-involved shooting, so Bryant says Columbus investigators did not have access to all of the evidence in the case,
Homicide detectives and BCI agents worked over the weekend to determine which incident each victim was tied to, Bryant said.
One victim was in critical condition and others are in stable condition, including one suspect who was taken into custody, Bryant said.
Two people were shot to death and a woman was fatally stabbed in separate incidents over the weekend in Columbus.