COLUMBUS — A 32-year-old man has been charged with murder after a West Side assault that police say left a man lying in the roadway, where he was struck by a vehicle and killed on Thursday night, Oct. 15.
Columbus police responded to a crash at about 9:30 p.m. near Sullivant Avenue and Binns Boulevard, on the edge of the Hilltop neighborhood. Officers found that a vehicle had struck Kyle Cooper, 30, on Sullivant Avenue. Medics took Cooper to a local hospital, where he died at 10:02 p.m.
Investigators determined that Cooper had been assaulted before the crash and left in the road, according to the police release. Officers found Michon Minyard, 32, nearby and arrested him on charges of murder and felonious assault.
Court records lay out the allegation in stark terms. In a probable cause affidavit filed in Franklin County Municipal Court, a detective alleged that Minyard kicked and stomped Cooper’s head as Cooper lay in the road, incapacitating him before the vehicle hit him.
The driver who struck Cooper remained at the scene and was not charged, police said. The fatal sequence, as investigators describe it, rests on the assault that left Cooper unable to get out of the roadway — which is why the criminal charges fall on the alleged assailant rather than the motorist.
Minyard’s case now moves through Franklin County Municipal Court on the murder and felonious assault charges. As in any criminal case, the charges are allegations, and he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
Police are still gathering accounts of both the assault and the crash, and witnesses who saw either the fight itself or the moments just before the vehicle came through could help investigators pin down the exact sequence on Sullivant Avenue that night. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Columbus police Homicide Unit at 614-645-4730 or provide an anonymous tip to Central Ohio Crime Stoppers at 614-461-8477.
For Hilltop residents, the death is a grim one: an assault on a neighborhood street, a man left in the path of traffic, and a driver who came upon him with no realistic chance to avoid the outcome police described Friday.
