Man pleads to murder after trying to make Columbus shooting look self-inflicted
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Edward Lominac wanted Columbus police to think Travis McDaniel shot himself, but he put the gun in the victim’s wrong hand.
That was on Feb. 1, 2019, at a 10th Street home in East Wynnton, where Lominac had come from New Jersey to stay with his daughter after her residence was burglarized, authorities said. The daughter was away that day as Lominac visited with McDaniel, her neighbor.
How Lominac came to shoot McDaniel still wasn’t clear from testimony at his sentencing this year, when he pleaded guilty to murder, aggravated assault and using a gun to commit a crime.
Superior Court Judge Gil McBride sentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole, plus an extra five years for the weapons offense.
Those sentenced to life with parole typically serve 30 years before they’re eligible for release.
The evidence
Homicide detectives examining the crime scene in 2019 could see that McDaniel’s wound was not self-inflicted, and his body was not where it fell after the shooting.
Lominac had dragged McDaniel halfway out of the bedroom where the shooting happened, leaving him sprawled across the threshold to an adjacent hallway, with a trail of blood leading back to a chair in front of a keyboard, police said. A bullet had damaged the keyboard, and blood had pooled behind the chair, they said.
McDaniel, 27, had been shot in the left side of the head, above the ear, and had an exit wound at the base of his skull, on the right side, investigators said.
While staging the scene to make that wound look self-inflicted, Lominac had placed McDaniel’s index finger in the trigger guard of the Tec 9 semi-automatic pistol, detectives said.
But he put the gun in McDaniel’s right hand, not his left, officers said, so the victim would have to twist and stretch to shoot himself behind his left ear.
After the shooting, Lominac called his daughter about 8:20 p.m. to tell her he needed help because an accidental shooting had killed someone in her home, she reported. She told him she could not get involved.
Lominac also called other people he knew, trying to get a ride to a bus station that night, police said.
‘Very remorseful’
The prosecutor in Lominac’s case, Assistant District Attorney Robin Anthony, said Lominac afterward gave varying accounts of the shooting, once saying that he and McDaniel were fighting over the gun, and later that he was handing McDaniel the gun when it discharged accidentally.
“He never said what happened,” Anthony said. McDaniel’s wound had so much soot from gunpowder that the gun barrel had to have been nearly in contact with his head, she said.
Lominac, 57, took responsibility for McDaniel’s death at his sentencing, saying he did not deserve forgiveness for his actions, Anthony said.
“He was very remorseful, expressed regret,” she said. “He claimed not to remember what happened. He spoke highly of the young victim.”