Court round-up: Columbus man facing 25 years behind bars for fatal shooting

A Columbus man is facing at least 25 years behind bars for a fatal 2021 shooting.

Zaire D. Jones, 21, of the Near East Side, pleaded guilty last week to involuntary manslaughter, discharging a firearm into a habitation and possessing a weapon under disability in connection with the fatal shooting of 34-year-old Arthur Coons late on the night of Aug. 21, 2021 following a confrontation between Coons and several neighbors.

Franklin County prosecutors dropped a murder charge and a felonious assault charge.

Franklin County Common Court Judge Mark Serrott sentenced Jones to a minimum prison term of 25 years with a maximum of 30 years and six months, as requested by the plea agreement between prosecutors and Jones. As part of the plea agreement, Jones agreed to not apply for early judicial release.

Jones also pleaded guilty last week in other cases, including a domestic violence case and a felonious assault case connected to an incident on July 5 when Jones and others shot into an apartment building on the East Side.

For those cases, he received an eight to 12-year prison sentence that will run concurrent (at the same time) to his sentence for the killing.

Jones is also charged in federal court with obtaining a gun in September 2021 while he was under felony indictment. Jones is likely to plead guilty to the federal charges.

Franklin County prosecutors are recommending the federal sentence run concurrently with the sentence in the local case. But the federal judge could still sentence Jones to serve his prison terms consecutively.

Context:Near East Side man jailed for shooting into apartment charged in separate August homicide

Two men get probation in connection with accidental gun death

Two Columbus men are on probation after they pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence charges in connection with the accidental 2021 gun death of their friend, 19-year-old Caleb Day, of the city's South Side.

Tejuan Terrill Files III, 22, pleaded guilty on Nov. 2 to tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony, with a firearm specification. Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Kim Brown sentenced Files to three years of community control, aka probation.

Files’ 21-year-old codefendant, Jeremiah Flowe German, also pleaded guilty to the same charge in October. Brown sentenced him to two years and six months of community control.

On March 6. 2021, Files brought a gun to a home on Bolton Avenue on Columbus' East Side, according to Franklin County Assistant Prosecutor Thomas Stoltman.

“While in the home, Mr. Day was examining the firearm, loading and unloading it, as well taking it apart and putting it back together. At a certain point Mr. Files asked Mr. Day to give him back his firearm. Witnesses stated that during the transfer, the firearm went off and struck Mr. Day,” Stoltman told The Dispatch.

Columbus police said the shooting was reported at 3:29 p.m. at a home on the 3400 block of Bolton Avenue. Officers and medics responded and found Day had been shot in the face by a single gunshot. He was pronounced dead at the scene at 3:36 p.m.

Police said witnesses on the scene told detectives that Day had been mishandling a firearm when it went off and shot himself. Physical evidence at the scene, however, contradicted the witness statements, police said.

Files left the house after the shooting, police said, then returned a couple hours later.

In the days immediately after the shooting, Columbus police identified Files as a suspect in Day’s death, saying in a news release: “based on the physical evidence, it does not appear Day shot himself.”

Police initially obtained a warrant for Files' arrest on a murder charge, but the charge was dropped after the grand jury indicted the two men on charges of tampering with evidence with a gun specification.

Stoltman said witnesses told investigators that nobody intended to harm another person while handling the firearm.

The two men were only ever indicted on charges of tampering with evidence because after the incident, at the direction of his codefendant, Files moved the gun, Stoltman said.

Man sentenced for murder in 2021 fatal stabbing

Austin Wray, 25, is serving a life prison sentence with the possibility of parole after 15 years for fatally stabbing 22-year-old Crystal Rose Glowka at his home on the Far West Side.

Wray stabbed Glowka with a knife on Feb. 18, 2021, according to court documents.

Wray pleaded guilty to murder in July. Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Colleen O’Donnell sentenced Wray to 15 years to life in prison, the mandatory sentence for murder in Ohio.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Court: Columbus men sentenced for murder, involuntary manslaughter, more