A second man is now charged with murder in the Nov. 4 shooting that killed a 25-year-old woman in Columbus’s Milo-Grogan neighborhood, after investigators identified him as the driver who brought the accused shooter to the scene and then circled back to pick him up. Raychan Williams, 33, of Columbus’s South Side, was charged in connection with the death of Indya Dickerson, according to Franklin County Municipal Court records reported by The Columbus Dispatch.
During a hearing on Saturday, Nov. 7, Municipal Court Judge James O’Grady set Williams’ bond at $3 million, The Columbus Dispatch reported. The charge makes Williams the second person facing a murder count in Dickerson’s death, as Columbus police continue to build the case around the early-morning shooting on Gibbard Avenue.
According to the court records cited by The Columbus Dispatch, Williams drove a black vehicle to the 800 block of Gibbard Avenue in Milo-Grogan at about 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 4. A passenger got out of the vehicle, and Columbus police have identified that man as Christian Houchins, 34. Police say Houchins shot Dickerson and a second woman before the vehicle left the area, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
Surveillance video from the area showed the black vehicle leaving the scene after the shooting, then circling back around and picking Houchins up, according to the court records reported by The Columbus Dispatch. That sequence is the basis for the murder charge against Williams: prosecutors are treating the driver who allegedly delivered the shooter and retrieved him afterward as a participant in the killing itself.
Dickerson was taken to a nearby hospital, where she died of her injuries, The Columbus Dispatch reported. The second woman who was shot is expected to survive. Her name has not been released in the court records cited so far, and the records do not describe a relationship between the victims and the two accused men beyond the circumstances of that morning.
The court records also add a significant piece of background about Houchins. At the time of the shooting, Houchins had a pending domestic violence and assault case in Franklin County Municipal Court that was tied to the same Gibbard Avenue address, and he had been ordered to stay away from that address, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Why he was there on the morning of Nov. 4, in defiance of that order, is one of the central questions the investigation still has to answer in public.
Milo-Grogan is a small, historically working-class neighborhood northeast of downtown Columbus, and a fatal shooting at 7:30 in the morning — as residents are leaving for work and children are heading to school — lands differently than one in the middle of the night. Neighbors woke to police tape on a residential block, and the case has moved quickly since: a victim identified, a shooter identified by police, and now a second arrestee charged and held on a $3 million bond within three days of the shooting.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What is confirmed comes from Franklin County Municipal Court records as reported by The Columbus Dispatch and from Columbus police identifications contained in those records: Dickerson, 25, was shot and killed on Nov. 4; a second woman was wounded and is expected to survive; police identify Houchins, 34, as the man who fired; and Williams, 33, is charged with murder as the alleged driver, with bond set at $3 million on Nov. 7. What is not yet public in those records: the second victim’s identity and condition beyond the expectation that she will survive, a stated motive, and the full list of charges Houchins faces in connection with the shooting itself. NewsForce247 is not naming any additional suspect details until they appear in court records or an official Columbus police release.
The case is the latest in a string of deadly shootings Columbus police and Franklin County prosecutors have worked this fall, including the fatal Klondike Road crash investigation in Delaware County that has kept first responders across the metro busy. Each case is separate, but together they frame the workload now moving through Franklin County Municipal Court.
What happens next is procedural and concrete. Williams remains held on the $3 million bond set Saturday while his case moves through Franklin County Municipal Court, the stage at which a grand jury typically decides whether felony charges advance to the Court of Common Pleas. Columbus police have not announced the investigation closed, and detectives customarily ask anyone with video or information from the Gibbard Avenue area on the morning of Nov. 4 to contact the homicide unit. NewsForce247 will update this story as further court filings and police releases become available.
Photo: Becker1999, CC BY