COLUMBUS, Ohio — A violent weekend in Columbus left five people dead and five others injured from different shootings across the city.
According to numbers released Monday from the Columbus Division of Police, the city now stands at 36 homicides year-to-date. That is the lowest since 2016. At the same time last year, the city had already reached 70 homicides.
10TV spoke with Mayor Andrew Ginther about the weekend of increased crime.
“What we saw over the weekend was unacceptable,” said Ginther. “This weekend was a reminder that we have to be vigilant and double down on our comprehensive approach of prevention, intervention and enforcement.”
The prior weekend was also a violent weekend for the city.
Several Columbus police officers found themselves in harm’s way. Two officers were shot at in an altercation near Whitehall. One officer was shot on Georgesville Road.
“We as a community need to make a very clear statement that violence against our officers is unacceptable and we as a community are going to hold you accountable if you got after those who are serving and protecting us,” said Ginther.
Police said Saturday morning’s shooting outside a hookah lounge left three people dead and three injured.
“It was over 150-200 people running for their lives, bullets spraying everywhere. It was chaotic,” said a neighbor who heard the shooting happen.
According to police records, Columbus police have responded to that address 31 times since January 2022. Two of those times were reports of a person with a gun. Two other times were assault reports.
City Attorney Zach Klein also responded Monday to the violence. His office is currently looking at the next steps it can take.
“We cannot have, whether it's the Weiland Park neighborhood or the east side or west side, we cannot have any problem property that is a magnet for violence. It must be shut down,” Klein said.
Klein said he will look at the calls for service at the property and other complaints and take action if the data supports it.
It wasn’t just shootings that disrupted the weekend. According to Taco Fest organizers, teenagers took over the festival and caused fights. It shut the festival down early Saturday and prompted organizers to bring in extra security and impose an age restriction.
“We need parents to step up, too. Everybody's got to step up and do their part. The police can't solve this problem. The city can't be responsible for raising kids. I say to parents 'Know where your kids are,’” said Ginther. “If they don't make the right choice, we introduce them to the city attorney, the county prosecutor, the state attorney general and the US attorney because they'll see a lot of them if they continue on this path if they don't end up dead first.”
The increased gun violence isn’t slowing down the efforts of community activists like Derrick Russell, founder of a stop the violence group based in the Linden neighborhood. With his group, he is constantly working to bring the community together and get people the resources they need.
"We can't ever let our feet up off the gas because once we do that, things like this can rise even more tenfold if we don't stay in front of it,” Russell said.
So far this year, there’s been 36 homicides in the city of Columbus. That number is nearly half of what it was this time last year. But Russell said he’s concerned about a different number.
"When we look at the felonious assaults, we have to try to find a way, how we can get the guns out of the people’s hands, because the felonious assaults from April and going into May are really high,” Russell said.
Of the 585 cases Columbus Police’s Felony Assault Unit has responded to so far this year, 444 of them involved the discharge of a firearm.
Now, Russell said they have to keep doing the work to reach the city’s goal of keeping homicides until triple digits this year.
"I'm always gonna keep hope alive and we're gonna get that job done but we gotta stay at it,” Russell said.