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By Theodore Decker and Debbie Gebolys
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Charges will be filed against a 16-year-old girl who was shot by a Columbus officer Wednesday night on the North Side after she refused to drop a rifle she was holding, police say.
Family members identified the wounded girl as Regina Jennings of Leona Avenue.
Jennings was in Ohio State University Medical Center last night, being treated for multiple gunshot wounds. She is expected to recover.
Officer Adam Hicks, 29, shot the girl about 11:40 p.m. Wednesday after arriving at a carryout at E. 5th and Peters avenues, just east of I-71.
The Express Market Drive-Thru has been the scene of several robberies and a homicide in recent years, and police said officers often check on the employees there.
Police said Hicks, who was with another officer, got out of his cruiser and saw Jennings standing near the store’s front door with a rifle partially concealed beneath a blanket. She ignored commands to drop the gun, and Hicks shot her when he felt threatened, police said.
But that’s not the story from Jennings’ mother, Patricia Jennings. She said her daughter had gone to the market with her boyfriend, who went inside to buy food. Regina stayed outside, holding her boyfriend’s pit-bull puppy in a blanket.
“She had a blanket,” Patricia Jennings said. “But it was a dog in there.” She said her daughter was unarmed.
Her daughter was shot three times, once in each upper arm and once in the back, she said. She said her daughter talked to her about the shooting when she visited her at the hospital.
“I don’t understand how she got shot in the back,” Jennings said. “She didn’t run at all. She was facing him.”
Jennings said the dog, which ran away when her daughter fell, wasn’t found.
Sgt. Jim Gilbert of the Fraternal Order of Police Capital City Lodge No. 9 defended the shooting, saying police recovered a firearm at the scene.
“There are other people who saw the weapon.
“We’re not going to sit back and wait for a suspect to fire first,” Gilbert said. “The facts show that the individual was armed. We don’t make this stuff up.”
Regina Jennings just finished her freshman year at East High School, her mother said. She is one of three daughters, and her family moved to the North Side from the Mount Vernon Avenue area in November.
Division spokeswoman Amanda Ford said police are trained to react to a threat of deadly force with deadly force. Officers would not use lesser means of force when faced with a gun, she said.
The shooting is the second involving Columbus officers in the past two weeks.
On June 6, Officer Fredrick Hannah fatally shot a 31-year-old man on the Near East Side. Police said Edward Hayes of New Orleans was armed and didn’t follow their commands to surrender, though his family disputes that scenario.
The shooting is Hicks’ fourth since joining the Police Division nearly seven years ago, and the second this year.
In 2004, the officer shot and wounded a man with a knife in a South Linden alley in a shooting that was deemed justified.
In 2006, he was one of five officers who shot at James K. Polk after a car chase that ended with a crash in North Linden. Polk was shot and killed after he pointed a gun at the officers. All of the officers were cleared of wrongdoing.
Hicks and another officer shot at and wounded a robbery suspect in South Linden on Jan. 3. That shooting remains under review.
Copyright 2008 The Columbus Dispatch