A 14-year-old boy has been charged with murder in last week's shooting death of a Warren native, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
Joseph Q. Reeder is accused of killing 64-year-old Anthony Hines on Feb. 4 inside an apartment on the East Side of Columbus.
Police had been looking for Reeder since he cut off an electronic-monitoring bracelet late last month.
According to reports, police were called at 5:56 p.m. to 3999 Elaine Place S. in the Sutton Square apartment complex west of South Hamilton Road and just north of I-70.
Although Hines' obituary published in today's Tribune Chronicle states that he died at Mount Carmel East Hospital in Columbus, police said they found Hines dead inside the apartment, which is listed in Franklin County court documents as Reeder's home.
Police alleged that Reeder shot Hines with a handgun and stole his wallet. He then drove several miles away and threw the gun out the window, police said.
Police did not say how they came to arrest Reeder or detail the relationship between him and Hines. A representative at Wellington Funeral Home in Warren, where services are to be held for Hines on Friday, said he does not believe the two are related.
Juvenile Court records show that Reeder was chronically truant from school. He was placed on electronic monitoring last month after he was charged with driving without a license and failing to pull over for Gahanna officers while driving a stolen car on Jan. 20.
Reeder was due back in court on the Gahanna case today. He cut the monitoring bracelet off his ankle on Jan. 29 and disappeared, a monitoring officer said in court documents filed the next day. Police had been looking for him since.
In previous court documents, Reeder said he belonged to the Bloods gang. The documents also said that on Sept. 1, he had a gun held to his head by his 28-year-old mother's boyfriend, who believed the boy had stolen his marijuana.
Reeder later told a youth caseworker that he didn't fear for his life in that incident because he knew the gun wasn't loaded, documents said.
He is also facing delinquency counts of aggravated robbery and tampering with evidence.
According to his obituary, Hines was born Nov. 27, 1948, in Warren.