The Men Who Killed My Friend Should Turn Themselves In
Dwayne Cummings and Chrystian Foster's lives are over as they know it. That doesn't mean there has to be any more tragedy to an already tragic story.
Any subscription proceeds will go to the medical and burial costs for Greg Coleman Jr., as warm a friend for which any man can ask in this cold world.
I received an audio message from the sister of my friend, Greg Coleman, on Monday. I assumed it contained details about his funeral, which she had previously told me would be Saturday in Marion.
“So, crazy thing!” the message began. “Greg is still with us!”
That was indeed a crazy thing considering I spent the prior 24 hours in shambles about his apparent death. (I know she saw my RIP posts, too, because she commented on them!)
His former place of employment has since canceled next week’s scheduled benefit.
I understand not wanting to say goodbye. The family wants to keep him alive for another month, hoping for a miracle and allowing friends and family to pay their final respects.
Greg is gone. To pretend otherwise would only mean he would die again when they officially pull the plug. Once is enough for this lifetime.
Chrystian Foster and Dwayne Cummings, two names I will never forget, killed my friend and boasted about it on social media.
The Columbus Division of Police undoubtedly knew the names of the perpetrators before they released the video of the death they failed to prevent in Columbus’ liveliest neighborhood on the busiest drinking weekend of the year.
The cynic in me thinks the police did it to further propagandize the “violent crime surge in the Short North” narrative that just netted them another $250,000 earlier this week on top of the previous $500,000 from city council for additional patrols in the area.
But as always with the police, you can’t assume malice when stupidity suffices. The lead investigator is Anthony Johnson, “the Dancing Cop,” who also sucker-punched a black man on camera back in 2019.
No matter the reason for publishing the snuff film, the result was the same: Thousands of people, including the racists, witnessed the vicious assault that killed my friend.
Hours later, the police announced attempted murder charges against the duo.
The first sucker punch was thrown by Dwayne Cummings, a 28-year-old Columbus resident with a history of assault and domestic violence. He was convicted of bringing a loaded gun to the airport in 2018. Charges for domestic violence, assault and aggravated menacing were dismissed at the prosecutor's request in 2021.
He was evicted from his last known address.
The other man Greg initially squared up to fight one on one is Chrystian Foster, a 32-year-old Columbus resident who is a five-time felon currently on bail for his sixth charge, possessing a weapon under disability. (Basically, getting caught with a gun you weren’t allowed to have due to previous violent convictions.)
Foster is scheduled for trial on those charges in October. He received bail in May of this year.
After having the story spoon-fed to them by local police, numerous local television networks have tried to contact me.
Sorry about your friend, they say. Would you be willing to share your trauma so we can use a five-second soundbite to fit our already preconceived narrative?
They don’t say that last part so explicitly. But I know how those types operate. You can’t be on TV that much without warping your brain in a way that ruins what other humans call “emotion.”
I could probably be on some Republican show tomorrow. Crying my cracker-ass blue eyes out while shrieking about how some liberal big city judge and lazy prosecutors let these career criminals walk free and kill my friend. “My friend would be alive today if these liberal losers had just done their job,” I could say.
Watching my friend be murdered on tape and having bystanders take photos and videos as he lay unconscious in the street after they robbed him has only hardened my feelings against America’s brutal incarceration system.
Cummings and Foster have both done extensive prison time, and it did nothing to reform them. They didn’t fear a return to those conditions enough to prevent doubling black to further assault my friend after the sucker punch. It didn’t stop them from slapping the shit out of their friend for wanting to upload video evidence of their crime to Facebook.
In a way, I’m thankful for their stupidity. Sucker punches kill people every day. This could have easily happened in some alleyway away from cameras. The perpetrators could have been smart enough not to tape and upload the deed. It’s not as if the Dancing Cop is an intimidating thinker. Greg could easily be another statistic in an unsolved murder in a city that can’t solve a majority of them despite annual expenditures north of $750 million on police.
Cummings and Foster should save the police the trouble and hand themselves in. Once that felony warrant drops, it’s over unless you have mountains of unmarked cash or can travel and work in a country without an extradition treaty.
But Cummings and Foster aren’t that smart. Judging from their mugshots, they appear to be men who have wanted to die for a long time. And I pray the police don’t give them that opportunity when they’re inevitably apprehended.
I should hate these guys. I should want to grab a gun and shoot them myself. Lord knows a jury would have a hard time convicting me. But I refuse to go down that road and feed the seed of personal vengeance. That won’t do anything to bring Greg back to life, and it won’t do anything to help his daughter through hers.
I pity the people who love them almost as much as I pity Coleman’s family. Three lives were ruined in thirty seconds. A dispute, as far as I can tell, that started between two parties that had never met.
And now they’re connected for the rest of their miserable lives.
Any subscription proceeds will go to the medical and burial costs for Greg Coleman Jr., as warm a friend for which any man can ask in this cold world.
THOSE WMDs. The internet thinks a Chess grandmaster cheated with anal beads… The mystery behind the crime wave at 312 Riverside… How a dispute over dog shit put a celebrated detective and judge under scrutiny… The myth that America’s abortion laws are more permissive than Europe’s… Make restaurant-quality Ramen at home.