Half-done tattoos, broken TV, stolen Xbox led to murder suspects’ arrests
Half-finished tattoos, a broken TV and a stolen Xbox led to three suspects’ arrests in Columbus barber Charlie Artis’ 2012 homicide, according to testimony Thursday in the murder trial of Edward Lee and Donteviouse Jarquis Doleman.
Witnesses said these odd circumstances that broke the case came together on Jan. 19, 2012 — two weeks after Artis fatally was shot Jan. 5 during a robbery at Columbus’ Gunboat Plaza shopping center off Milgen Road.
A key witness was Josh Myers, who testified he lived at 13th Avenue and 20th Street back in 2012, just around the corner from where Lee, Doleman and Demetrice Octavion Scott were staying. He owned a tattoo gun, and gave people tattoos in his bedroom in exchange for cash or bartered goods.
He said the three men wanted him to give them tattoos, the total value of which he estimated at $300. Instead of money, they at first offered him a revolver, which he found insufficient, he said.
Next they proffered a 64-inch plasma-screen TV, which he accepted.
Under their arrangement, he would do half the tattoo work up front, then finish it after they gave him the TV, he said. He half-finished the tattoos about 11:45 p.m., then walked around the corner to get the TV and bring it back.
When he got it home and turned it on, he discovered the screen was obscured by pencil-thin lines across it. Having been given a broken TV, he refused to finish the tattoos, and later sold the TV to a friend who thought it could be fixed, he testified.
Then the three half-tattooed guys came back, hoping to retrieve the TV they’d traded him, and he told them he didn’t have it. To prove he wasn’t lying, he left two at his front door and showed the third around the house, he said.
While he was doing that, the two men at the door went in and took his Xbox gaming system and his video games, he said. The woman with whom he was staying called police.
Jason Mann was among the patrol officers who responded and followed Myers and his hostess around the corner to where the men were staying on 19th Street.
Mann testified he went to the rear of the 19th Street residence while another officer knocked on the front door. As soon as he knocked, three men tried to run out the back door before Mann yelled at them to halt, after which they went back in, Mann said.
In a few moments he saw them try to climb out a side window, before they stopped again, he said.
A woman who came to the door said no one else was home, but the officer saw Scott in the hallway, Mann said. Scott offered to show officers his bedroom, to prove he had no Xbox in it.
When officers entered the room, they could see part of the Xbox gaming system under the bed, Mann said, so they arrested Scott and put him in a patrol car.
The home’s primary resident gave officers consent to search the house, and in a rear bedroom they found Lee hiding behind a door and Doleman in a closet, along with a book bag containing the rest of the Xbox system, Mann said.
But that was not all: On the floor of the first bedroom, beside the Xbox under the bed, Mann saw a .38-caliber Rohm-brand revolver containing empty shell casings, as all the bullets had been fired, Mann said.
Prosecutors maintain that was the gun used to kill Artis.
Police then arrested Doleman and Lee, and detectives later tied them and Scott not only to Artis’ homicide, but to robberies, burglaries, assaults and a rape — a crime spree that began Dec. 15, 2011, when Scott and Doleman robbed a woman of her Kia Sport, and ended when Scott, Doleman and Lee were arrested for stealing the Xbox.
Only Doleman and Lee are on trial this week, because Scott has pleaded guilty to multiple felonies and agreed to testify for the prosecution.
The prosecution alleges Scott set Artis up for the robbery, and Lee carried it out, shooting Artis in the left side of the chest with the .38-caliber revolver before running east through a treeline to nearby apartments, where Scott and Doleman waited for him in a green car.
Besides murder, court records show Lee faces three counts each of aggravated assault and using a firearm to commit a crime, two counts of burglary and one count each of theft and attempted robbery.
Doleman’s charges besides murder are three counts each of armed robbery and burglary, two counts each of aggravated assault and using a firearm to commit a crime and one count each of auto theft and theft by taking, according to his indictment.
Court records show Scott pleaded guilty Feb. 15 to three counts each of aggravated assault, armed robbery and burglary, four counts of using a firearm to commit a felony, and one count each of rape, attempting to commit a felony, felony theft and misdemeanor theft. He’s expected to serve 30 years in prison.
Tim Chitwood: 706-571-8508, @timchitwoodle
Besides the fatal shooting of Charlie Artis, authorities allege Edward Lee, Donteviouse Doleman and Demetrice Scott committed these offenses:
- A Dec. 15, 2011, armed robbery in which Scott and Doleman took a woman’s Kia Sport
- A second Dec. 15, 2011, armed robbery in which Scott, Doleman and Lee took a woman’s Lexus.
- A Dec. 20, 2011, attempted robbery and shooting at Hometown Grocery, 1159 27th St., where Scott and Lee shot at a 47-year-old man leaving the store, damaging a 2008 Honda Odyssey.
- A Dec. 21, 2011, burglary at a 19th Street apartment, where Scott and Doleman took a TV, prescription drugs and the keys to a 2005 Chevrolet Equinox that was stolen six days later.
- A Jan. 6, 2012, break-in at a 14th Street residence where they took $6,000 worth of goods.
- A Jan. 11, 2012, burglary in which the three broke into a home in the 2300 block of 14th Avenue.
- A Jan. 15, 2012, break-in at a 23rd Street home, where at gunpoint Scott raped the woman living there as the three took $1,000 worth of loot along with the woman’s 2006 Chevrolet Aveo.
This story was originally published May 12, 2016 at 5:33 PM with the headline "Half-done tattoos, broken TV, stolen Xbox led to murder suspects’ arrests."