COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – In late May, Andre Hill and his roommate Donyell Bryant watched in shock, along with the nation, the video of a Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee on George Floyd’s neck for minutes, even as Floyd pleaded that he couldn’t breathe.
Nearly six months later, Bryant, 42, was sitting alone on the same sofa at his Dublin home in suburban Columbus, watching police body cameras shoot and kill his 22-year-old friend.
And Pastor Al Sharpton will deliver his friend’s eulogy at a public memorial service on Tuesday, Hill’s family said Friday.
“I mean, it just still doesn’t even feel real,” said Bryant. “It just seems a bit crazy.”
Columbus officer Adam Coy, who is white, shot Hill, who was black, early December 22 when Hill came out of a garage with a cellphone in his left hand and his right hand darkened. At the time he was visiting a friend of the family.
Police had responded to a neighbor’s non-urgent complaint about someone stopping outside and starting a car.
‘He brought me Christmas money. He didn’t do anything, ”a woman in the house yelled at the police afterwards.
Coy, who had a long history of civilian complaints, was fired on December 28 for not activating his body camera for the confrontation and for not providing Hill with medical attention.
In addition to an internal police investigation, the Ohio Attorney General, the U.S. Attorney for Central Ohio and the FBI have begun their own investigations into the shooting.
At Tuesday morning’s memorial service at the First Church of God in Columbus, civil rights attorney Ben Crump is expected to issue a “call to action,” the Hill family press release said.
Family and friends remember Hill – a father and grandfather – as a devoted husband to his family, an ever-smiling optimist and a skilled trader who, after years of working as a chef and restaurant manager, dreamed of having his own restaurant one day.
“I consider him an everything 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 neighborhood of Columbus, a racially mixed area on the east side of the city. He graduated in the early 1990s and received a certificate in business management and culinary arts from Hocking College in southeastern Ohio.
Hill – ‘Dre’ for friends and ‘Big Daddy’ for his three grandchildren – worked as a chef or manager in many restaurants around Columbus over the years, including Buffalo Wild Wings and Popeyes, and franchises two smaller chains, Cooker Restaurant and the old bag of nails.
He was an accomplished soul food chef but enjoyed trying all cooking styles.
“You name it, he makes it,” said Michael Henry, 49, who attended high school with Hill and later shared an apartment. He added, “That was his passion, cooking.”
Later, Hill joined Henry at Airnet Systems in Columbus, a shipping company that shipped parcels and mail, including overnight checks, to banks. There he met Bryant, who bonded during a game of chess. The two hit it off, eventually moving in together and becoming more brothers than roommates, said Bryant, who met his four-year-old girlfriend through Hill.
Victor Carmichael met Hill and Bryant when he joined Airnet Systems in the late 1990s. Carmichael, 44, was new to Columbus at the time and didn’t know anyone. Hill helped him find a community in Ohio, he said, typical of the kind of friend he was.
Hill’s penchant for chess epitomized the way he behaved, said his younger brother, Alvon Williams, who called him a star.
“He had a chess brain with life,” said Williams. “Chess is one move before your first move, even two moves 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 a lengthy divorce.
“He’s the one making that call—” Come here right now. I prepare dinner. Let’s go, ” said sister Michelle Hairston, 45.
Last year, the coronavirus pandemic forced Hill to interrupt his dream of owning a restaurant, and he took up work in the construction and remodeling of houses to provide for his family instead. He worked in Ohio as a subcontractor, Sister Shawna Barnett said.
The day he died, Hill had assembled his own crew to secure independent contracts, a goal he’d been working towards since March, Bryant said.
On that Tuesday, Hill borrowed a colleague’s truck he planned to buy and parked it in front of his friend’s house.
Underneath the jersey he wore when he got out of the garage and slowly walked to the police, he wore a Black Lives Matter T-shirt calling for justice for George Floyd.
___
Farnoush Amiri is a corps member of the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a national, nonprofit service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on hidden issues.