COLUMBUS, Ohio (NewsNation Now) — The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI said Tuesday that they will conduct a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of a Black man by an Ohio sheriff’s deputy.
The family of 23-year-old Casey Goodson Jr. says he was shot while unlocking the door to his home in front of his grandmother and two toddlers, not outside it, as authorities assert.
U.S. Attorney David M. DeVillers announced federal authorities will be reviewing the facts surrounding the shooting after the state attorney general’s office declined to investigate the shooting of Goodson because it said the police department didn’t ask soon enough.
Columbus Police Chief Thomas Quinlan said those efforts will complement his division’s own investigation by its Critical Incident Response Team.
“After being briefed about the circumstances surrounding the incident by CPD, I believe a federal investigation is warranted,” DeVillers said in a news release. “I have contacted the FBI and have requested that they work in conjunction with CPD to investigate this case through our office.”
The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office first reported Friday the fatal shooting of a man that day on the north side of Columbus. The case was given to city police because the sheriff’s office does not oversee investigations of its own deputies in fatal shootings, and the police department did not release such details as the names of Goodson and the deputy who shot him until Sunday.
Since then, Goodson’s relatives and law enforcement officials have given conflicting details. The sheriff’s office does not provide officers with body cameras, and the deputy’s SWAT vehicle did not have a dash-mounted camera. This means visible evidence of the events is lacking.
The deputy, Jason Meade, a 17-year veteran of the sheriff’s office, had been assigned to a U.S. Marshals Office fugitive task force.
The task force had just finished an unsuccessful search for a fugitive Friday afternoon when Goodson, who was not the suspect, drove by and waved a gun at Meade, according to U.S. Marshal Peter Tobin.
Meade confronted him outside Goodson’s vehicle in front of the man’s home, Tobin said.
One witness heard Meade command Goodson to drop his gun, and when he didn’t, the deputy shot him, Tobin said. Goodson was taken to a hospital, where he died.
Lawyers for Goodson’s family say that he was shot while walking in his home and that his grandmother and two toddlers, who were not his own children, witnessed the shooting.
“My grandson just got shot in the back when he came in the house,” Goodson’s grandmother told a dispatcher Friday, according to 911 recordings obtained by The Associated Press. “I don’t know if he’s OK.”
Tobin’s narrative leaves out “key details that raise cause for extreme concern,” the attorneys’ statement reads, including the object Goodson was holding. Police say a gun was later recovered from the scene, but Goodson’s family says he was holding Subway sandwiches.
“At this point, witness testimony and physical evidence raise serious concerns about why Casey was even confronted, let alone why he was shot dead while entering his own home,” the lawyers added.
While the statement from the family’s lawyers did not say if Goodson was or was not carrying a gun, it says he had a license to carry a concealed weapon and notes that “Ohio does not prohibit the open carrying of firearms.”
The Sheriff’s Office and a police union declined to comment on behalf of Meade.
Ohio Mayor Andrew Ginther attempted Monday to send the probe into the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which the attorney general’s office oversees, to ensure “another layer of independence.” Ginther signed an order in June requiring the bureau to investigate all deaths involving Columbus police as a result of racial injustice protests that followed the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky.
“We have felt the pain of police-involved shootings across the country this year,” Ginther tweeted. “Every loss of life is tragic, and each deserves a thorough and transparent investigation.”
But the bureau declined to take the case because it believed Columbus police should have called for help immediately, according to the office of Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican.
“Three days later after the crime scene has been dismantled” and witnesses have dispersed “does not work,” a spokesperson for Yost said in a statement Monday night.
According to authorities, once the investigations are complete, the evidence will be turned over to the Franklin County Prosecutor’s office for presentation to a grand jury.
“Columbus Police are eminently qualified to investigate and get to the truth of this tragedy,” Quinlan said. “Independent of our investigation, bringing in the Department of Justice brings all of the resources of the federal government to answer the critical civil rights questions being posed by the community. This offers the highest level of transparency and a clear path to the truth.”
The Associated Press and NewsNation affiliate WCMH contributed to this report.
