A call was received on March 25, 2026, at around 7:30 a.m after a owner of a building on Lockbourne Road arrived discovered an unauthorized person inside. He made the 911 call. Officers found 36-year-old Dekevin Louis dead from a gunshot wound. At 7:40 a.m., first responders declared him dead at the site. Investigators eventually verified that he had not fired the gunshot that killed him.
The building where Dekevin was found sits in a stretch of Columbus where commerce meets community. A post office stands nearby. Stores line the street. Families live within walking distance. It is not the kind of place where people expect to hear that a man was killed inside what police believe operated as an after-hours club. But on that Wednesday morning, the quiet of the neighborhood was broken by the presence of cruisers, crime scene tape, and the slow, methodical work of homicide detectives.
Dekevin Louis was known to those who loved him as someone who brought warmth wherever he went. He had a genuine nature, the kind that made people feel comfortable in his presence, that turned acquaintances into friends, that left a mark without effort. His family, now left to navigate a grief that makes no sense, have held onto that memory of him, the man who connected with people, who showed up, who mattered.
Investigators spent hours inside the building, documenting evidence, looking for anything that might explain what happened. Outside, they canvassed the neighborhood, knocking on doors, asking residents if they had seen or heard anything unusual in the hours before dawn. The homicide occurred in a busy corridor, and police hoped that someone, somewhere, had captured something on camera, had noticed a vehicle, had seen a person leaving when they shouldn’t have been there.
By late morning, the Columbus Division of Police Homicide Bureau had confirmed what the family already knew. Dekevin M. Louis, 36 years old, had been killed. They released no information about suspects, no motive, no sense of why a man had been shot inside a building on Lockbourne Road. The investigation was just beginning.
For the neighborhood, the killing has been a shock. Residents who pass that building every day, who shop at the nearby stores, who walk their children to school along the same streets, are left to wonder how violence found its way so close to home. Police cruisers remained outside for more than a day, a reminder that something had happened there, something that had taken a man’s life.
Dekevin’s family is left to plan a funeral, to tell his story, to hold onto the memories of a man whose time was cut short. They remember his warmth, the way he connected with people, the genuine nature that made him beloved to so many. They are waiting for answers, for someone to come forward, for justice to take its course. But they know that no outcome will bring him back.
The building on Lockbourne Road is quiet now. The cruisers have gone, the tape has been removed, and the street has returned to its ordinary rhythm. But for those who loved Dekevin Louis, the silence is not peace. It is the weight of a loss that will take a long time to carry, and the hope that someone, somewhere, knows what happened and will finally speak.