Man fatally shot outside Columbus apartment complex as mosque funeral lets out

A man was shot and killed Monday afternoon in the parking lot of an apartment complex next to a mosque in northeast Columbus, moments after mourners had begun leaving a funeral service held there, police said. Investigators stressed that the gunfire was not directed at the mosque or anyone inside it, but the shooting still unfolded within feet of a building full of grieving worshippers, turning a funeral into the scene of a homicide investigation.

The Columbus Division of Police said officers were dispatched to the 2200 block of Albert Avenue around 2:11 p.m. after dispatchers received multiple calls reporting shots fired. A man described by police only as a young adult was pronounced dead at the scene eight minutes later, at 2:19 p.m. A second person was also located by officers, though police have not released that person's identity or condition. No arrests had been made by Monday evening, and police said the person or people responsible were considered armed and dangerous.

The apartment complex sits among a cluster of two-story residential buildings in a quiet stretch of northeast Columbus, with the mosque situated immediately next door. It is the kind of mid-afternoon, mixed-use block, apartments, a house of worship and nearby businesses, where a funeral and a shooting would normally have little reason to collide. On Monday they did, and for several hours the block became both a crime scene and a gathering point for a grieving congregation that had arrived to bury one of its own.

A chaotic scene next to a funeral

Officers had initially been called to the area for a reported fight involving several people before the gunfire broke out, according to local reporting on the shooting. Columbus police spokesperson Nicole Jaros provided the initial details to reporters at the scene, which she and other officers described as chaotic. Sgt. James Fuqua, also with the Columbus Division of Police, called the shooting "senseless" and said there were "many shots fired" in a short span of time.

The gunfire erupted as a funeral was wrapping up at the mosque next to the apartment complex, sending mourners, children and relatives of the dead man into the same chaotic scene as television crews and first responders. A second, separate altercation broke out later near the assembled media, involving family and friends of the shooting victim and people who had been leaving the funeral; no arrests have been reported in connection with that second confrontation either.

Federal agents working an unrelated matter in the area were reportedly nearby when the shots were fired, and CBS News, citing the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, reported that ATF personnel assisted Columbus police with the response. The agency said its initial information indicated the gunfire broke out as people were leaving the funeral, consistent with the account given by Columbus police.

A city already on edge over gun violence

Monday's shooting adds to what has been a difficult year for Columbus on gun violence. As of early October, the city's homicide count for 2026 stood at 64, a figure that included a Hilltop-neighborhood killing that pushed the total one victim ahead of the pace recorded at the same point in 2025, according to department data cited in local coverage. The Columbus Division of Police maintains a running public list of the year's homicide cases, which it updates as investigations proceed and close.

Sean Stevenson, executive director of the Columbus violence-intervention group End The Violence, warned in an interview with a local television station earlier this month that he expected the city's violence to worsen as the weather turned colder. "I believe the violence is going to get a lot higher," Stevenson told reporters after an earlier homicide this fall, before Monday's shooting.

The Columbus Division of Police posts daily incident summaries through its media-releases archive, which as of Monday had not yet included a formal release on the Albert Avenue shooting, a sign of how early the investigation remains.

Relief, and lingering unease, among worshippers

For the mosque's congregation, the shooting arrived at an especially painful moment, in the middle of a service meant to mourn a death, not add to one. Police were explicit that the house of worship itself was not a target.

"We want to make it clear this was not an attack on the mosque," Sgt. James Fuqua said, adding that the gunfire was "not a targeted attack on the mosque, nor did this incident occur at the mosque."

Khalid Turaani, executive director of the Ohio chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he was relieved the mosque and its congregation were not the intended target, but that the proximity of gunfire to a religious gathering was still deeply unsettling for the community. The organization has spent much of the year urging mosques statewide to review their security after a mass shooting at a California mosque earlier in 2026.

That shooting, in May, killed worshippers and a security guard at the Islamic Center of San Diego and prompted CAIR-Ohio to publicly reaffirm its push for stronger security at mosques across the state, according to a statement the organization issued at the time. Monday's shooting, even though police say it had nothing to do with the mosque, is likely to feed into that same anxiety among Ohio's Muslim community about violence intersecting with religious life.

Neighbors in the apartment complex described the shooting as unlike anything they had witnessed in the area before. One resident, Gaston Hernandez, said he had lived there for more than a decade and had never seen a scene like Monday's unfold outside his door.

Those most directly affected span several overlapping groups: the family of the man who died, now awaiting formal notification and an autopsy before his name can even be released; the mourners who had gathered for an entirely separate funeral and found themselves instead running from gunfire; the residents of the apartment complex, who spent Monday afternoon watching police tape go up around their own parking lot; and, more broadly, a local Muslim community already primed by national events to wonder whether a place of worship can ever be fully insulated from the country's gun violence, even when, as in this case, it was not the intended target at all.

No arrests, no motive, and an investigation in its early hours

By Monday evening, Columbus police had not identified the man who was killed, pending notification of his next of kin, and had not released any information about a suspect or a motive. Officers said the investigation was in its preliminary stages and that detectives were still working to piece together what led to the gunfire, including whether it was connected to the fight that originally prompted the 911 calls.

Police asked anyone with information about the shooting to come forward, and the case will be added to the department's homicide log once a formal determination is made and the victim is identified. Given the involvement of federal agents who happened to be nearby, it remains unclear whether the ATF will play any ongoing role in the investigation beyond its initial assistance, or whether the case will be handled solely by Columbus homicide detectives.

For now, the Division of Police says its priority is identifying who opened fire and why, and determining whether the earlier altercation that drew officers to the complex is the same dispute that turned deadly. Detectives will also need to establish whether the gunfire was aimed at a specific person among the crowd or was more indiscriminate, a distinction that will shape both the eventual charges and the department's public account of what happened. No further details, including the identities of either victim, had been released as of Monday night.

The mosque's leadership has not said whether Monday's shooting will change how the congregation handles security at future funerals or large gatherings, though CAIR-Ohio's broader push this year for mosques to reassess their security posture suggests the question is likely to come up. Columbus police, for their part, have given no indication that the shooting will prompt any change in how officers are deployed around religious services generally, framing it instead as a dispute between individuals that happened to erupt in a sensitive location at a sensitive time.