Teen shot by police during pizza robbery investigation faces additional robbery charges

By The Columbus Dispatch  • 

A fingerprint left at the scene of an October burglary on the Hilltop has led police to file additional charges against a 15-year-old boy who was shot by SWAT officers during a weekend robbery investigation.


Upon his release, police filed two delinquency charges of robbery against him in connection with an ongoing robbery probe. He is being held in the county’s juvenile detention center.

The burglary charge filed today accuses Mullins of breaking into a neighbor’s home at 129 Wrexham Ave. on Oct. 21. A laptop computer was taken in the burglary, according to a police report.

Mullins was shot at 11:40 p.m. Saturday during a confrontation with police outside a vacant house next door to his own home.

Columbus police went to the Hilltop neighborhood after a Domino’s Pizza deliveryman became suspicious about a delivery to the vacant house at 139 Wrexham Ave.

A police officer posed as the delivery person because there had been a series of robberies of pizza-delivery drivers on the Hilltop, including one heist that left a driver shot and wounded.

SWAT Officers Charles Distelhorst and Richard Hilsheimer, who are both 21-year police veterans, were involved in the Mullins shooting. Another officer, who was not named, served as the delivery man.

Police have said only that the shooting occurred after a confrontation between Mullins, a 22-year-old man with him, and officers. They said that a knife and a can of Mace were found at the scene.

The 22-year-old man has not been charged, pending further investigation.