March Trial Set For Former Columbus Officer Facing Murder Charge In Death Of Andre Hill

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A judge has set a March trial date for former Columbus police officer Adam Coy, who is facing murder and other charges in the December shooting death of Andre Hill.

As part of a short hearing Monday morning, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Stephen L. McIntosh scheduled the trial for March 7 and briefly discussed the status of discovery, jury questionnaires, and expert witnesses with prosecutors and defense counsel.

Coy, 44, who is free on a $1 million bond pending trial, was on hand and dressed in a suit for Monday’s status conference, but did not speak.

Coy was indicted in February on counts of murder, felonious assault and reckless homicide after fatally shooting Hill, an unarmed Black man, on Dec. 22.

Coy and fellow Columbus police officer Amy Detweiler had been dispatched at 1:38 a.m. to Oberlin Drive off Kenny Drive north of Ohio State University on a nonemergency report of a vehicle repeatedly turning on and off for a half-hour. Coy arrived first and had a brief conversation with Hill — an invited guest at the home —out at the street Hill then went up the driveway and apparently into the dark garage.

Meanwhile, Detweiler arrived and the two officers went up the driveway to the open garage door with their flashlights on. As Hill exited the garage holding an illuminated cellphone in a raised left hand, Coy’s bodycam video shows Coy fatally shot him. Though it was not activated at the time of the shooting and was turned on after the shooting, the bodycam video automatically captures the previous one minute of video, but no audio.

Coy was fired from his Columbus Division of Police within a week of the shooting. His legal counsel has argued that Coy fired after mistaking a set of keys in Hill’s right hand for a silver revolver, though it was later learned that Hill was unarmed.

Hill’s death drew local and national outrage, occurring weeks after the shooting death in early December of Casey Goodson Jr., another Black man, who was fatally shot by Franklin County Sheriff’s SWAT deputy Jason Meade outside Goodson’s home. Meade left the sheriff’s office on a disability retirement in July.

The Franklin County Prosecutor’s officer hired two special prosecutors to determine what to do with that case.