More than five months after a Columbus police officer fatally shot Donovan Lewis, a 20-year-old unarmed Black man, his family is taking legal action.
\nLawyers for Lewis\u2019 mother, Rebecca Duran, filed a civil lawsuit Thursday against Columbus K-9 officer Ricky Anderson, who\u2002killed\u2002Lewis with a single shot to the abdomen while executing a warrant at night.
\nFour other officers who were present \u2014 Chance Knox, Harry Dorsey, Jack Randall and Justin Dodrill \u2014 were also named as defendants. This lawsuit does not name the City of Columbus or the Columbus Division of Police as defendants. Elliott said Duran and her legal team may decide to sue the city in federal court soon.
\nDetails of lawsuit against Columbus officers
\nThe lawsuit cites seven counts against Anderson, a 30-year veteran of the Division of Police, including wrongful death, breach of duty and deprivation of Lewis\u2019 state constitutional rights.
\nThe lawsuit alleges officers violated Andre\u2019s Law by failing to immediately render medical aid to Lewis. The law was passed in 2021 in honor of Andre Hill, an unarmed man fatally shot in December 2020 by Officer Adam Coy. The lawsuit argues that officers handcuffed Lewis as he lay on the bed groaning after being shot, patted him down and then carried him down stairs outside the apartment before rendering medical aid.
\nThe lawsuit alleges officers had multiple nonlethal options available to apprehend Lewis \u2014 including calling for a negotiator or SWAT, deploying a stun gun, or unleashing the K-9 \u2014 but chose not to use them.
\nThe lawsuit discusses how the officers began to talk after the shooting about what happened but then turned off their body cameras. The lawsuit claims Dorsey said at one point, “We\u2019re just gonna stay here and say nothing until the (expletive) union gets here.”
\nThe complaint further alleges that when the Fraternal Order of Police representative arrived and passed Duran at the site, the representative said,
\n“another day in the hood.”
\nAccording to the lawsuit, between 2001 and 2020, Columbus Police found Anderson violated Division of Police policy at least 10 times, including in eight cases involving either use of force or chain of command issues. Six of these alleged incidents occurred since 2018.
\nThe complaint also states a 2020 internal affairs investigation sustained a sexual harassment allegation against Anderson.
\nThe shooting of Donovan Lewis
\nAnderson shot Lewis on Aug. 30 while Lewis was in bed during an attempted arrest on charges of domestic violence, assault and improper handling of a firearm. Lewis died at a hospital.
\nPolice body camera video shows Anderson and Knox approach a closed bedroom door.
\nAnderson opened the bedroom door as Knox yelled “hands” and pointed his weapon with a flashlight at Lewis, who began to sit up in bed. Within a second of the door opening and the command, Anderson leaned around into the open door and shot once, striking Lewis in the abdomen, the video shows.
\nLewis was holding in his left hand what Police Chief Elaine Bryant said later turned out to be a vape pen. Knox did not fire his weapon.
\nFamily calls for action
\nDuran said Thursday that these past 170 days have been her worst nightmare.
\n“It’s also been extremely frustrating,” she said. “There’s a whole lot of talk and a whole lot of words leaving organizations, but there is no action.”
\nDuran and Elliott said that every day without police reform allows there to be more police violence in Columbus.
\n“We were patient,” Elliot said at a press conference. “We said do your investigation. That’s fine. But here we sit in the middle of February without anything.”
\nElliott said Anderson has not been disciplined and there has been no movement in the criminal process. Anderson has been on paid administrative leave since the shooting.
\nColumbus City Attorney Zach Klein’s office, which represents Columbus police officers in such legal matters, said in a statement on Thursday:
\n\u201cWhile (the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation) completed their investigation into the facts of this incident, we have not yet seen the contents of that report because it is currently at the (Franklin) County Prosecutor\u2019s Office awaiting grand jury presentation. We have just received a copy of the lawsuit this morning, but are still reviewing it and have no further comment at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Usatoday<\/p>\n
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More than five months after a Columbus police officer fatally shot Donovan Lewis, a 20-year-old unarmed Black man, his family is taking legal action. Lawyers for Lewis\u2019 mother, Rebecca Duran, filed a civil lawsuit Thursday against Columbus K-9 officer Ricky Anderson, who\u2002killed\u2002Lewis with a single shot to the abdomen while executing a warrant at night. Four other officers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[2212,2502,2501],"class_list":["post-6024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-columbus","tag-donovan","tag-lewis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6026,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6024\/revisions\/6026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}