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A former police officer in Columbus, Ohio, has been indicted on murder charges stemming from the shooting of a young Black man after apparently confusing his bag of sandwiches for a gun nearly one year ago.
A grand jury on Thursday brought down the indictment against former Franklin County Sheriff’s Office deputy Jason Meade, who shot Casey Goodman Jr. six times, including five times in the back, on Dec. 4, 2020. Meade, 44, was formally charged with two counts of murder and one count of reckless homicide in the shooting on Dec. 4, 2020, the Columbus Post-Dispatch reported.
Goodson, 23, was reportedly inside his home or right in front while holding sandwiches when he was fatally shot in front of his mother and two toddlers. Police maintained Goodson was outside of his home and tried to justify the lethal force because they somehow mistook the sandwiches for a gun.
Goodson’s mother, Tamala Payne, said his autopsy results show he was struck six times from behind with a “high-powered rifle.”
The U.S. Marshal for the Southern District of Ohio was quick to justify the shooting and maintained that Meade gave Goodson a command to drop a gun he was accused of waving at an officer as he drove home returning from a trip to the dentist.
Police say they recovered a gun, but Goodson’s family said he is licensed to carry one and doubted he would just brandish it at law enforcement. Instead, they say, he was carrying a bag of sandwiches from Subway when he was shot in the back and fell into his home with his keys still dangling in the door’s lock.
More than two months after the shooting, Franklin County Sheriff Dallas Baldwin downplayed Goodson being shot in the back, insisting that “criminal investigations over the years have shown that the physical location of gunshot wounds alone don’t always tell the entire story of what happened.”
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost declined to take up the case because he said Columbus police took three days to bring the case to their attention. Columbus police also waited two days before they officially identified Goodson as the victim.
Payne previously claimed the police had changed stories multiple times, prompting suspicion of some kind of a coverup.
“My son was murdered in cold blood, and we don’t have no answers as to why he was murdered,” she said less than a week after his shooting. “It is not a question to me at all at this time if my son was murdered or not.”
Goodman’s shooting was the first of three high-profile police killings of Black people in Columbus in instances of preventable violence for which no members of law enforcement have been held accountable. Thursday’s indictment was one step closer to reversing that fact.
This is a developing story that will be updated as additional information becomes available.
SEE ALSO:
Casey Goodson Jr.’s Mother Speaks Out About Son ‘Murdered In Cold Blood’ By Ohio Cop
Justice For Casey Goodson: Ex-Columbus Cop Indicted For Murder Of Black Man Holding Sandwiches was originally published on newsone.com
