Daniel Ajayi said Wednesday night that he becomes frustrated when he hears about the deaths of Columbus youth like 12-year-old Angel Salguero Diaz, whose shooting death was announced hours earlier Sunday.
Columbus police officers responded to a report of gunfire just after 10:15 p.m. and found a fatally wounded Diaz in the 1300 block of East Hudson Street in the city’s Linden neighborhood on Sunday. Medics arrived and pronounced him dead at 10:24 p.m. Detective Russ Weiner said the police homicide unit is working to piece together the night’s events using video footage, but that there were no suspects and no arrests had been made as of Wednesday.
“This is getting absurd,” said Ajayi, vice chairman of the North Linden Area Commission. “When I hear things like this it breaks my heart. It’s going to take a lot of political will to address this, whether it’s restricting firearms or something like that.
“The starting point is prevention.”
Mayor Andrew Ginther and officials from the Columbus Office of Violence Prevention (OVP) held a community conversation Wednesday at the Columbus Public Health auditorium to discuss what the city has done and plans to do in 2024 to help prevent violent crime. But they never mentioned the shooting death of Diaz, a student at Columbus City Schools, during the public meeting.
OVP touts events and announces $4.5 million for 2024 operating budget
Instead, city leaders talked about a 57% drop in homicides in Columbus so far this year compared to 2023, the second-largest drop in a major U.S. city, according to the Office of Violence Prevention. As of Tuesday, there have been 22 homicides in Columbus in 2024, including four in April.
While he said he was cautiously optimistic about the homicide rates, Ginther also told attendees that the decline shows the city’s strategies and emphasis on community involvement — especially among Columbus youth — are working.
“Every young person needs to see themselves in the future of the city,” Ginther said.
The mayor left immediately after his speech and was unavailable to answer questions about the 12-year-old’s death.
Yrik Sherfield, one of three community relations coordinators for OVP whose community area includes Linden, where Diaz’s body was found, declined to comment on Diaz’s death through OVP’s public information officer.
Rena Shak, director of the OVF, said the agency’s first year in 2023 was spent reaching out to partners in the Columbus community who could work together and help the city meet its violence reduction goals. These partners include the Mothers Against Murdered Columbus Children, who were represented at Wednesday’s public meeting.
Shak said OVP’s goal in 2024 will be to connect with youth, formerly incarcerated adults and others and connect them to resources. The OVP’s 2024 operating budget has been increased by $3.5 million from last year to a total of $4.5 million in 20204.
The OVP also plans to continue organizing events with the community to solicit input to guide its efforts, Shak said, and will continue to host gun buyback programs, with another planned this fall stands.
“We will never stop working with people who want to work with us to prevent violence,” Shak told the crowd.
After the meeting, Shak said she was personally unaware of Diaz’s death until asked by The Dispatch. The death of a 12-year-old is always a tragedy, she said, adding that both the OVP and the city must continue to invest in youth violence prevention.
smeighan@dispatch.com
@ShahidMeighan
This article originally appeared in The Columbus Dispatch: Hours after 12-year-old boy’s death revealed, city’s homicide rate drops
