Police blocked North Pearl Street, behind the McDonald’s parking lot where shots were fired. Credit: Jack Long | Special Projects Director
The shooting that led to a campuswide active attacker Buckeye Alert sent to thousands of students involved more than just one suspect and one victim.
There was a second suspect and a second victim who was not shot, but robbed, according to a police report.
The suspects shot one victim, Wesley N. Powers Jr., and robbed the other victim, Jerron Hale, of $10 in the campus-area McDonald’s parking lot and then fled in an unknown direction, according to the report.
Robert Sagle, commander of the off-campus area for Columbus Police, said that even if only two parties were involved in the actual shooting, all parties listed in the report would have been involved in the robbery.
“Even if only one of them shot … just because they’re still with the other person that’s committing that part of the crime –– the shooting part –– they both would have been committing the robbery part,” he said.
Sagle said it is early in the investigation and the suspects have not been identified.
“It depends if the victim’s cooperative or not in any investigation, which there was a little bit of an indication that they were not,” he said.
After being shot in the thigh, Powers ran into the McDonald’s and out the front door before collapsing in front of Pita Pit, according to an Aug. 25 Columbus Police press release. Powers was then transported to Ohio State Wexner Medical Center and is expected to survive, according to the release.
At 1:36 a.m. on Sunday, students, faculty and others signed up for Buckeye Alerts received an alert regarding an active attacker on campus, which was followed by seven more messages with further details.
A tweet from Ohio State Police at 1:54 a.m. on Sunday described one suspect as a “male wearing a cowboy hat and black hoodie.”
Read more about the incident here.
