A Franklin County judge has sentenced a 22-year-old Columbus man to life in prison without the possibility of parole for at least 49 to 55½ years after he fatally shot his own sister and her friend outside a South Side bar in 2023. Joseph Howard opened fire outside Double D's Pub on Sept. 13, 2023, killing 24-year-old Taya Mollette, his sister, and 24-year-old Tavia Copley, after intervening in a physical altercation between the two women.
According to court records reported by The Columbus Dispatch, Howard yelled “Get off my sister” before pulling a handgun and firing into the crowd outside the pub. The bar sits in the 1500 block of South High Street, positioned along the boundary separating Columbus's Merion Village and Hungarian Village neighborhoods, according to the City of Columbus. Court records also state that a third adult victim, Daniel Brumfield, survived with critical gunshot wounds.
Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Stephen McIntosh handed down the sentence on Aug. 6. A Franklin County jury had convicted Howard in July on charges of aggravated murder, murder, attempted murder and felonious assault, per court filings cited by the Dispatch, and the panel also found him guilty of aggravated robbery and tampering with evidence, alongside mandatory firearm specifications.
Aggravating Actions After the Shooting
Prosecutors alleged that after the shooting, Howard confronted Copley as she lay on the ground, threatened a witness, and stole a cell phone in an effort to prevent victims from calling 911. Those actions formed the basis for the additional aggravated robbery and tampering with evidence charges that stacked onto his sentence. Official police reports indicate dispatchers received the initial shooting call at 11:38 p.m. that night, with Copley pronounced dead at the scene at 11:46 p.m. and Mollette dying at an area hospital at 12:29 a.m.
Howard fled Ohio in the days following the shooting. Twelve days later, on Sept. 25, 2023, he was apprehended in Largo, Florida, by the U.S. Marshals Service working alongside the Southern Ohio Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team. He was 19 years old at the time of his arrest, before being extradited back to Franklin County to face charges.
Sentencing Under Ohio Law
Ohio Revised Code Section 2929.03 sets aggravated murder sentences starting at 20 to 30 years before parole eligibility, and Section 2941.145 adds mandatory three-year consecutive terms for firearm specifications, according to Ohio Laws. Combined with his convictions on aggravated robbery, felonious assault and tampering with evidence, that statutory framework produced the cumulative minimum of 49 to 55½ years that Judge McIntosh imposed.
Community reporting following the killings noted that Copley was a mother of a young son who worked locally in Grove City. The loss of both young women in a single, sudden burst of violence outside a neighborhood bar shook friends and relatives who watched a night out turn fatal within minutes.
Part of a Deadlier Stretch for Columbus
The shooting happened during what Columbus Division of Police data shows was the third-deadliest year in city history, with 148 homicides recorded in 2023 before that total dropped to 123 in 2024. Columbus police demographic reporting from that year also found that young adults were driving much of the city's violent crime, with more than 60% of homicide victims and most arrested murder suspects under the age of 30 — a pattern reflected in this case, where Howard was 19 at the time of the shooting and both women he killed were 24.
The Double D's Pub shooting is not the only violence reported along that stretch of the Merion Village and Hungarian Village border. Hoodline previously reported gunfire near the border after two adults were wounded along East Hinman Avenue in June.
