City leaders work to make area surrounding Ohio State University safer
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Columbus city leaders are coming up with a plan to make sure a violent event does not occur again at a Waffle House located just steps away from Ohio State’s campus.
This as the search for answers continues in a deadly early morning shooting outside of the restaurant.
Columbus Police are searching for 19-year-old Jaquan Curry, who’s charged with murder. Police also released pictures of three persons of interest — who they haven’t identified. This is the second time in a little more than a year someone has been killed near the location.
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“Looking at what has happened over that past year, it’s enough that I think certainly warrants our attention,” said Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein.
Klein said his office and the Columbus Division of Police are working together to come up with a safety plan for the restaurant.
“The long term and medium term goal here is figuring out what are the permanent solutions from a security standpoint that need to happen,” Klein said.
38-year-old Ronald Diggs was shot and killed outside the restaurant early Monday. His friends say he was a well known entertainer and a kind soul. They said he was in town from Atlanta for a performance.
Police said this started with a fight between 20 people – Diggs was not involved. Sarah Johnson, a senior at Ohio State University, said hearing about this was alarming.
“It’s definitely something we’ve thought about especially because we live right around the corner from here,” Johnson said.
She and her roommates say they are always careful when walking past that area at night and they often hear the sound of sirens around Columbus. Johnson hopes these safety plans will change things.
“Just because it doesn’t always directly involve the OSU students. I don’t know about you guys but never feel personally that unsafe,” Johnson said.
Klein said Waffle House is being cooperative. He said they have already looked into adding more lighting. His office and the division of police are making recommendations like adding more cameras and security officers. Klein said the biggest change would be potentially limiting hours of operation. Right now, the Waffle House is open 24 hours.
“I think we have the benefit of being in the city attorney’s offices like what are we going to do about it moving forward? Whether it’s an after hours clubs or a late a restaurant that’s open late or a bar that’s a danger to the community is that we have tools that we’re able to use to make places safer so we can use the data and the evidence and the unfortunate events and tragic events that do happen to craft plans to prevent that from happening in the future,” Klein said.
Klein said he hopes to have a concrete plan by next week. He said if Waffle House stops cooperating he will bring them to court. NBC4 reached out to their corporate office and they said they had no comment.
Klein said there are dozens of businesses around the City of Columbus that are on their radar for being potential problem businesses.
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