A Franklin County jury convicted a Columbus man Thursday of murder in a 2022 shooting death that Franklin County prosecutors said was in retaliation for the victim shooting him months earlier.
Keith Z. Coleman, 27, of the city’s South Linden neighborhood, was found guilty in the 2022 death of Henry B. Moore Jr., 32, after a four-day trial in Franklin County Common Pleas Court. The jury found Coleman guilty of aggravated murder and murder, and both sentences included a three-year weapons requirement, said Jason Manning, an assistant district attorney for Franklin County.
The jury also found Coleman guilty of two separate charges of possessing a firearm while disabled, meaning he was prohibited from possessing a firearm due to a prior felony conviction.
County prosecutors say Moore shot Coleman in January 2022 at the Sterling Court Apartments on Columbus’ east side. Prosecutors say Coleman lied to police at the time and refused to press charges. But police collected shell casings.
Seven months later, after midnight on July 3, 2022, Coleman shot Moore once in the face and once in the back in the same apartment building, prosecutors told the jury. Moore returned fire once, prosecutors said.
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Ballistics testing later revealed that the casings from the January shooting matched Moore’s.
A subsequent search of Coleman’s phone showed that about three hours after Moore’s killing, he went online to read a news article about Moore’s shooting death. That same day, Coleman searched Franklin County Municipal Court and County Common Pleas Court records, presumably to see if he had been charged, prosecutors said.
Coleman’s sentencing is scheduled for October 10.
Dispatch reporter Shahid Meighan contributed to this report.
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@LairdWrites
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Keith Coleman Convicted by Jury in 2022 Shooting of Henry Moore
