Columbus Police Say Weekend Shooting Spree Was Racially Motivated

The 39-year-old man charged in a weekend shooting spree told Columbus police his assaults were racially motivated, targeting white men he felt had taken from him all his life, a detective testified Monday.

Though police allege Justin Tyran Roberts was involved in three separate assaults that wounded five people Friday and Saturday in Columbus and Phenix City, he was in Columbus Recorder’s Court to face charges in just one of those incidents, a shooting around 2 p.m. Saturday under the Oglethorpe Bridge at Broadway and Fourth Street.

Justin Tyran Roberts

That’s where a man was shot in the back as he was getting into his vehicle in a parking area under the bridge {snip}

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Under questioning by public defender Robin King, Lockhart elaborated on what Roberts, who is Black, told him during an interview at police headquarters.

“Basically, he explained throughout his life, specifically white males had taken from him, and also what he described as ‘military-looking white males’ had taken from him,” the investigator said.

Roberts also claimed that such men were “shooting at him in a wooded area with a slingshot,” and the wounds had infected his skin, Lockhart testified. Police saw no injuries to substantiate that, he said.

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The weekend shooting spree began about 8:15 p.m. Friday outside the Courtyard by Marriott hotel at 1400 Whitewater Ave. in Phenix City, where one man was wounded and taken to Piedmont Columbus Regional {snip}

Phenix City police said the victim in that case, a white man with short hair, was getting out of his car when a gunman walked up and shot him, before fleeing across the 14th Street bridge into downtown Columbus.

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That shooting was followed two hours later by gunfire in the 1000 block of Broadway, where two men and a woman were hit, said Blackmon, who described those victims as two white males and a Black female.

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