Columbus police have identified the man found shot in an alley off Sullivant Avenue on the city’s Hilltop side on Monday night as Rodney S. Giddings, 49, the Columbus Division of Police said in an updated media release issued Friday, November 13. Giddings was found unresponsive with apparent gunshot wounds late Monday, and detectives say the investigation into who shot him is continuing.
According to the division’s release, patrol officers responded at 10:49 p.m. on November 10 to an unknown complaint in the 1300 block of Sullivant Avenue. In the alley northeast of the intersection of Sullivant Avenue and Brehl Avenue, officers found Giddings unresponsive with apparent gunshot wounds, the release says. Columbus Fire medics from Medic 817 transported him to a local hospital, where emergency room doctors pronounced him deceased at 11:23 p.m. that night, according to the release.
The identification released Friday closes one part of the case: police said next of kin notification has been made. Investigators are still attempting to determine the circumstances surrounding the incident, the division said, and no suspect information, motive, or arrest was announced in Friday’s update. The case is recorded under incident report number 260848733, in Zone 3, Precinct 8, cruiser district 81, according to the release.
Detective Orahood is the lead detective on the case and is being assisted by Detective Journey, the division said. Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Detective Orahood at (614) 645-4360 or the Columbus Police Homicide Unit at (614) 645-4730. Anonymous tips can be given to Central Ohio Crime Stoppers at (614) 461-TIPS (8477), according to the release.
The Sullivant Avenue corridor runs through the heart of the Hilltop, one of Columbus’s oldest west-side neighborhoods, and the alley where Giddings was found sits just west of downtown, in a stretch of the avenue lined with small businesses, homes, and side streets. A late-night call that begins as an unknown complaint and ends with a man found shot in an alley is the kind of case that depends heavily on what nearby residents saw or heard, which is why detectives are putting the tip lines at the center of Friday’s release.
Friday’s update is an identification, not a resolution. Police have not said whether they believe Giddings was targeted, whether anyone else was present when the shots were fired, or whether surveillance video from the area exists. In homicide investigations, the identification and family notification step is typically the point at which detectives begin releasing details in stages, as interviews and evidence work catch up with the basic facts of the night.
What happens next rests with the Homicide Unit’s follow-up work. Anyone who was in the area of Sullivant and Brehl avenues around 10:49 p.m. on Monday, November 10 — driving through, closing up a business, or at home nearby — and who saw or heard anything out of the ordinary is exactly who detectives are asking to call. The division’s Homicide Bureau issued Friday’s update under Chief Elaine R. Bryant, and further releases are expected as the investigation develops.