Columbus police said Friday that the death of a woman found on the Near East Side earlier this week was a homicide, in an Oct. 23 release that identified her as Amy Jo Ballard, 45.
Police said officers responded around 11 p.m. on Oct. 21 to an unknown complaint in the 1400 block of East Fulton Street. When officers arrived, medics told them Ballard had been pronounced dead at the scene and had suffered major trauma before her death, according to the release.
Columbus police homicide detectives were called to the scene that night. Police said the Franklin County Coroner’s Office later determined Ballard’s death was a homicide, a separate official finding that moved the case from a death investigation into a homicide investigation.
Police said the motive in the case is unknown at this time and no suspects have been identified. The department’s release did not describe a suspect, a vehicle or a timeline beyond the Oct. 21 response, and it did not say how Ballard was injured beyond the major trauma medics and officers found.
For residents of the Near East Side block where Ballard was found, the ruling means detectives will be working the area for witnesses and video in the coming days. Homicide investigations in Columbus often turn on a neighbor, a passerby or a camera that captured something around the time of the original call, and police are asking anyone who was in the area to come forward rather than assume someone else already has.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Columbus Police Homicide Unit at (614) 645-4730 or Central Ohio Crime Stoppers at (614) 461-TIPS (8477). Tips to Crime Stoppers can be given anonymously.
Police have not announced any arrest in the case, and the investigation remains open. NewsForce247 will update this story only with confirmed information from Columbus police or the Franklin County Coroner’s Office as those agencies release it.
The East Fulton Street response was the original call that brought officers and medics to the block on Oct. 21, police said. Because the coroner’s ruling came in a release two days later, neighbors who saw activity that night may not have realized at the time that they were watching the start of a homicide case, which is one reason detectives are renewing the call for information now.