Former Marine testified he was defending his neighbors. Jury finds him guilty of murder.
Elias Smith, a former Marine, testified that he believed he was protecting his neighbors when he fatally shot 43-year-old Jason Keys during a dispute on Father’s Day 2021 in a street on Columbus’ Far East Side.
Franklin County prosecutors said during Smith’s murder trial this week in county Common Pleas Court that Smith did not bother to ask questions before he interjected himself into a conflict that was already diffused, firing from his porch across the street on Walnut Hill Park Drive seven times with an AR-15 rifle.
A jury agreed with prosecutors on Monday, when after about three hours of deliberation they convicted 26-year-old Smith of two counts of murder. The jury also found Smith guilty of unlawfully discharging a firearm on or near a prohibited premises, in this case across a public road.
Common Pleas Judge Jaiza Page will sentence Smith at a later date to a mandatory life sentence. Page will determine when Smith gets the opportunity for parole after at least 21 years.
The complicated incident involved multiple guns and began with a paranoid older neighbor confronting Keys with a rifle in an attempt to scare him.
On the afternoon of June 20, 2021, Keys and his wife, Charae Williams Keys, were visiting her family at her grandparents’ house on Walnut Hill Park Drive on the Far East Side. For years, Keys has visited this street, prosecutors said.
Robert Thomas, 74, lived a few doors down on the same street. According to prosecutors, Thomas was beginning to show signs of dementia and in his paranoia, Thomas incorrectly believed that Keys had been sabotaging him for years — letting air out of Thomas’ car tires or spraying some kind of grass killer on Thomas’ lawn.
When Keys and his wife went to leave that afternoon and get in their car, Thomas confronted Keys with an unloaded assault rifle, but with an ammunition clip in his hands.
A loud argument broke out with family members running outside and screaming.
The family had disarmed Thomas, prosecutors said, when Smith opened his front door and from his porch across the street from the Williams home shot Keys seven times, according to the prosecution and the defense. Keys died of his wounds.
One of Smith’s defense attorneys, Larry Scott Petroff, said during the trial that Smith was at home with his two sisters and two brothers when one sister saw Thomas walking down the street armed.
Smith heard screams and grabbed his gun, Petroff said.
When he opened the door to assess the situation, Smith knew his neighbors, including Thomas and the Williams family, and did not recognize them as a threat, according to Petroff.
But Smith did not know Keys, according to Petroff. And Smith saw Keys holding something that looked like a gun, Petroff said.
Keys carried a handgun regularly and it was found out of its holster on the ground, according to Petroff.
Smith testified Friday during his trial that after the shooting, he realized he had made a mistake.
Thomas faced his own jury trial in November, during which a jury found him not guilty of involuntary manslaughter but guilty of aggravated menacing. Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Richard Frye sentenced Thomas in December to five years on probation.
jlaird@dispatch.com
@LairdWrites
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Former Columbus Marine guilty of murder in shooting during dispute
