“Gun safety” instructors teach their pupils that if they ever get lucky enough to realize their kinky fantasy of shooting a stranger in righteous self-defense, they should not only stay on the scene, but they should be the first person to call 911.
That’s the opposite of what Krieg A. Butler did after he shot 13-year-old Sinzae Reed “four or five times” in the back and hand on Oct. 12th in the notorious Wedgewood Apartments on the Hilltop.
From Jordan Laird of dispatch.com:
According to court records filed by a police officer, an eyewitness who knows Butler saw him exit a red truck and fire multiple times at Sinzae, striking him several times. Butler then got into his vehicle and fled the scene, according to court records.
Police arrested Butler, who wasn’t legally allowed to have a weapon under federal law due to a prior misdemeanor conviction, the next day.
Prosecutors charged him with murder and held him on $1 million bond.
A week later, however, prosecutors dropped the charges after Butler made a plea of self-defense. That dropped the bond, which kicked him into the streets.
There has been a lot of online fury around this decision by TikTok activists and the like. Unfortunately, these actions alone do not equate to a massive coverup underway at the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office.
Ohio is a Stand Your Ground State. Local prosecutors cannot charge Butler for violating federal law.
The prosecutor’s office made the decision to wait for all the evidence, which includes Reed’s autopsy, which takes time in the best of times without the backlog at the understaffed coroner’s office.
That prosecutors dropped the case does not mean Butler is walking free for the rest of his life. The investigation is still ongoing, and charges could still be brought by local, state, or federal investigators.
However! Franklin County Prosecutor Gary Tyack and his underlings have bungled two of the most recent high-profile murder cases that went to trial. Just because charges against Butler can still be brought, doesn’t necessarily mean they will be. And if Butler is charged, that’s no surefire road to a conviction.
With the national attention this case has garnered in the last week, I am of the belief that Butler will eventually be charged. He’s just some Hilltop honkey who is only free because he shot somebody down the socioeconomic ladder from him.
Unless Butler becomes a right-wing media darling like Kyle Rittenhouse, it’s hard to envision Krieger having the financial resources to finance the battery of lawyers required to fight this case if it goes to trial.
Butler’s sister is reportedly making claims that there are bullet holes in his car. My suspicion is those bullet holes appeared in his car between the time Butler shot Reed and the time the police arrested him. But that kind of stuff can be sorted with ballistics reports, and again, those things take time.
It’s still an awful situation. I don’t think I would be walking around as a free man if I claimed self-defense after prosecutors obtained a witness familiar with me that also saw me climb out of my car, shoot the mayor, and then drive away. I think the prosecutor’s office would have worked a lot harder to find a way to keep me behind bars.
But that’s how justice works in this country. Though there is not yet evidence of cover-up at the prosecutor’s office doesn’t mean we should stop busting Tyack’s ass over this. Everybody in that office needs to understand that we’re keeping our eyes on them.
Because it’s justified as a Columbus resident to feel that, since Butler is already walking free, the prosecutor’s office will decide on some random Friday night in February to release its “no charges” decision without ever presenting their grand jury case to the public.
Unfortunately, there is nothing to be done about this case at the moment except stew about another senseless death of a young black male in Columbus. Another life lost to senseless gun violence.
The ball is totally in Tyack’s court. The man has been dead since before he took office, but what happens next is entirely his office’s decision. In the meantime, you should tell your friends the story of Sinzae Reed.
Vigilance is the name of the game now. The more eyes that are drawn to the case reduces the chance of something shady happening.