Columbus police disclose new details about teen’s shooting death on Bay Avenue
The Columbus Police Department has released new information in the Friday night shooting of a teen in downtown, which they say was an unprovoked attack.
Kalielah Davis, 18, was shot in the head and killed in the 1000 block of Bay Avenue.
CPD deputy chief of the Bureau of Investigative Services Matt Blackstock told the Ledger-Enquirer on Wednesday that police recently learned the area is becoming a hot spot for young adults and teens to hangout at night.
Blackstock said this crowd doesn’t want to go to Broadway for multiple reasons, including police presence, thick crowds and an inability to get into the clubs. He said police feel the draw to the Bay Avenue area is the parking, two blocks from Broadway.
“It’s after hours, the businesses are closed, the parking lots are cleaned out, so there’s plenty of parking space for these kids to pull up in and park their cars and gather up because there’s nobody there,” he said.
Blackstock said Davis had gone to the area with some friends and was parked pretty close to where the Kadie the Cow statue stands near the Chattahoochee Riverwalk.
“For some reason,” he said, “a young person that was with this group of four or five males fired a round in the direction of the car and hit the victim in the head.”
The cause of the shooting is unknown, according to Blackstock.
“We’ve got one side of the floor going through interviews with people,” he said. “The other side of the floor is going through nothing but hours and hours and hours of videotape.”
CPD urges anyone with information about this case to call Det. Charles Alexander at 706-225-4263.
“My heart goes out to the family,” Blackstock said. “She wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
Previous shootings in the area
Blackstock is familiar with gun violence in the Bay Avenue area. He said his daughter was shot once in the side and another woman was shot five times in that area a couple of years ago. Both women survived.
His daughter was heading to a car parked off Bay Avenue when a group of kids walking down the street started indiscriminately firing, striking his daughter and the other woman, Blackstock said.
Davis’ shooting wasn’t the first time police responded to gunfire in the Bay Avenue area this year. Police responded to reports of gunshots there July 4, when a vehicle sustained damage and nine suspects were arrested.
Possible police patrols in the area
Blackstock said the property in the Bay Avenue area is owned by the W.C. Bradley Company and is not part of the Uptown detail. He said he has been told W.C. Bradley has its own security in the area.
However, CPD plans to be more aware of what’s going on in the area and send patrols to monitor the area, Blackstock said.
“We’ll have them ride by and check on that area as much as we can,” he said.
This story was originally published September 11, 2025 at 11:50 AM.