By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Officers who fatally shot a Black man in an Ohio emergency room last year won’t face criminal charges, a county prosecutor announced Friday.
Columbus police officers and security officers with Mount Carmel St. Ann’s Hospital opened fire on Miles Jackson April 12, 2021, after a struggle that began when Columbus officers discovered Jackson had a gun concealed in his sweatpants.
A standoff ensued after the gun went off, with police eventually opening fire as Jackson appeared to sit up and officers yelled, “He shot again!” and “He’s got a gun!”, according to bodycam footage.
A coroner’s report said Jackson was shot 20 times including wounds to his left ear, chin, chest, abdomen, buttocks and thighs.
The grand jury’s decision not to indict Columbus officers or Mount Carmel security officers was announced without comment by Gary Tyack, the elected prosecutor for Franklin County in central Ohio, home to state capital Columbus.
Tyack’s news release suggested Jackson fired three times. “Laboratory testing revealed that the gun Jackson possessed matched three of the spent casings found at the scene,” the release said.
The Attorney General’s Office concluded its investigation of the shooting in August 2021 and forwarded it to the Franklin County prosecutor.
Jackson had been taken to the same hospital, Mount Carmel St. Ann’s Hospital in Westerville, earlier the day he died, but had walked away. Westerville police were then called after he was found passed out in a nearby parking lot.
After a pat-down, where an officer previously cautioned for rushing his duties missed Jackson’s gun, those officers followed medics back to the hospital, where Jackson was met by Columbus police because of city warrants for his arrest. That officer and the Columbus officers who shot Jackson were white.
Both Columbus and St. Ann’s officers fired their weapons.
Emergency room staff tried to revive Jackson but he was pronounced dead at the hospital, authorities said. No officers, hospital staff or physicians were injured.
Protests followed the shooting, one of several in recent years in Columbus that led to a reckoning in the city over racial injustice and allegations of police brutality. Those incidents include the fatal shooting of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant less than a week after Jackson’s death as she swung a knife at a young woman.
The officer who shot Bryant was cleared of criminal wrongdoing earlier this year by a grand jury.
