COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – In late May, Andre Hill and his roommate Donyell Bryant, along with the country, watched in shock the video of a Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee on George Floyd’s neck for minutes, even while Floyd pleads that he could not breathe.
Nearly six months later, Bryant, 42, was sitting alone on the same couch in his Dublin home in suburban Columbus, watching camera footage of police shooting dead his 22-year-old friend.
And Rev. Al Sharpton will deliver his eulogy to his friend during a public memorial service, Hill’s family said Friday.
“I mean, it just doesn’t feel right yet,” Bryant said. “It just looks a little crazy.”
Columbus Officer Adam Coy, who is white, fatally shot Hill, Black, early December 22 when Hill emerged from a garage with a cell phone in his left hand and darkened his right hand. He was visiting a family friend at the time.
Police responded to a neighbor’s emergency complaint about someone stopping a car outside and starting it.
‘He brought me Christmas money. He did nothing, “a woman inside the house shouted at the police afterwards.
Coy, who has a long history of citizens’ complaints, was fired on December 28 because he did not activate his body camera before the confrontation and that he did not provide Hill medical assistance.
In addition to an internal police investigation, the Attorney General of Ohio, the U.S. Attorney for Central Ohio and the FBI began their own investigations into the shooting.
At the memorial service Tuesday morning at the First Church of God in Columbus, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump is expected to issue a ‘call to action’, according to the Hill family’s news release.
Family and friends remember Hill – a father and grandfather – as a man dedicated to his family, an always smiling optimist and a skilled trader who dreamed after years of working as a chef and restaurant manager to one day run his own restaurant possess.
“I consider him a man,” his 27-year-old daughter, Karissa Hill, said Thursday. She added: “It’s hard to say what he did because he did everything.”
Hill, 47, grew up in the Eastmoor area of Columbus, a mixed-race area on the east side of the city. He studied in the early 1990s and obtained certification in business management and culinary arts from Hocking College in southeast Ohio.
Hill – ‘Dre’ for friends and ‘Big Daddy’ for his three grandchildren – has worked at many restaurants in Columbus over the years, either as a chef as manager, including Buffalo Wild Wings and Popeyes, and franchises of two smaller chains, Cooker Restaurant and the old bag of nails.
He was a skilled soul food, but enjoyed trying all the culinary arts.
“Name it, he makes it,” said Michael Henry, 49, who attended high school with Hill and later shared an apartment. He added: “It was his passion right there, to cook.”
Hill later joined Henry at Airnet Systems in Columbus, a transportation company that sent packages and mail, including overnight checks to banks. There he meets Bryant and ties up a game of chess. The two got it right and eventually moved in together and became more like brothers than roommates, Bryant said. Meet his four-year-old girlfriend through Hill.
Victor Carmichael met Hill and Bryant when he also started working at Airnet Systems in the late 1990s. Carmichael, 44, was new to Columbus at the time and did not know anyone. Hill helped him find a community in Ohio, according to him typical of the kind of friend he was.
Hill’s penchant for chess shows the way he behaved, says his younger brother, Alvon Williams, calling him an overachiever.
“He had a game of chess with life,” Williams said. ‘Chess is a step ahead of your initial move, even two ahead. And that’s what he did every day with everything he tried to achieve. ‘
Hill insisted that his family – including his daughter and grandchildren and his two sisters and brother – keep in touch, especially after any lengthy separation.
“He’s the one making the call -” You’re coming here now. I cook dinner. Let’s go, ” said Sister Michelle Hairston, 45.
In the last year, the coronavirus pandemic has forced Hill to keep quiet about his dream of owning a restaurant, and he has started working on construction and home renovations to take care of his family instead. He worked all over Ohio as a subcontractor, Sister Shawna Barnett said.
The day he died, Hill assembled his own crew to do independent contracting, a goal he has been working on since March, Bryant said.
On that Tuesday, Hill borrowed a truck he was planning to buy and parked it outside his friend’s home.
Under the sweater he was wearing when he emerged from the garage and walked slowly to the police station, he was wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt that George Floyd was entitled to.
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Farnoush Amiri is a corps member of the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non-profit national service program that puts journalists in local newsrooms to report on national issues.