COLUMBUS, Ohio — A retired Columbus police officer who shot and killed 20-year-old Donovan Lewis in his bed during an overnight warrant service in 2022 will serve no prison time unless he breaks the terms of his probation. Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Julie Lynch on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, sentenced Ricky Anderson to three years of community control — the form of probation used in Ohio courts — after Anderson had entered an Alford plea in September to a charge of reckless homicide, according to Columbus Dispatch reporting carried by local television station WSYX ABC 6 and other outlets covering the hearing.

Before the sentence was handed down, Anderson addressed the court. “I do apologize to each and every one of Donovan's family,” he told the courtroom, according to the Dispatch reporting. Members of Lewis's family gave victim impact statements at the hearing, WSYX reported. Judge Lynch framed the shooting as a tragic mistake rather than a criminal act of malice, according to summaries of her remarks in court.

The terms of community control

The sentence carries specific conditions. According to the court reporting, Anderson is prohibited from owning a firearm and must submit to mental health assessments and potential travel restrictions while under supervision. Judge Lynch noted that any violation of those terms would result in a three-year prison sentence — the maximum that the reckless homicide charge itself carried, as Anderson's defense attorney Mark Collins had explained when the plea was entered in September: the possible range then was anything from probation to three years in prison.

What an Alford plea means in this case

An Alford plea is not an ordinary guilty plea. By entering it in September, Anderson acknowledged that prosecutors possessed sufficient evidence for a conviction without formally admitting guilt, and in exchange prosecutors dropped the initial murder charge he had faced. One consequence reported from the November 4 hearing is that, because of the nature of the plea, Anderson is precluded from contesting his recklessness in the civil litigation that is still to come — the February civil trial, where the family will seek further recourse.

The night Donovan Lewis died

The criminal case began in the early hours of August 30, 2022, at Lewis's apartment on Sullivant Avenue in the Hilltop neighborhood of Columbus, according to court records in the related civil case decided by Ohio's Tenth District Court of Appeals (Estate of Lewis v. Anderson, 2026-Ohio-2096). Columbus officers — Sergeant Chance Knox and Officers Harry Dorsey, Jack Randall and Justin Dodrill among them, with Anderson, a K-9 handler, also present — arrived at the residence to execute an outstanding arrest warrant. Lewis was wanted on charges of domestic violence and improper handling of a firearm, the appeals decision records.

Officer Anderson opened the bedroom door with his right hand and then quickly drew his gun with his right hand, the appeals decision states. At that moment, Anderson fired, striking Lewis in the abdomen. Lewis was transported to hospital by ambulance, where at 3:19 a.m. he was pronounced dead. Reporting on the case from the beginning, based on police body-camera footage described by the family's lawyer, has said the shot came within about a second of the bedroom door opening, and the Associated Press reported at the time that no weapon was found in Lewis's home. Those background facts were part of why the case drew national attention.

From indictment to plea: a case that took four years

A Franklin County grand jury indicted Anderson in 2023 on murder and reckless homicide charges — nearly a year after the shooting, a delay the family's attorney, Rex Elliott, publicly questioned at the time; Elliott also said then that Anderson had faced more than 60 complaints over his career, a claim made by the family's lawyer and not a court finding. Columbus police had already announced that Anderson had retired “in bad standing” while criminal and administrative investigations were continuing, meaning, as a department spokesperson explained, that he would receive a pension but could not retain a gun or police badge. His case then moved slowly through the Franklin County courts until the September Alford plea replaced a trial.

The civil case that February will decide

The criminal sentence does not end the legal story. On February 16, 2023, the Estate of Donovan L. Lewis — administered by his mother, Rebecca Duran — filed a civil complaint against Anderson and the other responding officers, alleging wrongful death, civil battery, breach of duty, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, failure to render aid and deprivation of rights; the estate later dismissed the action as to every defendant except Anderson. Anderson argued he was entitled to statutory immunity under Ohio law, but on June 4, 2026, the Tenth District Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court's refusal to end the case early, holding that genuine issues of material fact existed as to whether he acted recklessly. The civil trial is scheduled for February, and after Wednesday's plea consequence, his recklessness cannot be contested there, according to the hearing reporting.

Why Columbus is still watching this case

The Lewis shooting did not happen in isolation in the public record. In 2021, the U.S. Justice Department agreed to review Columbus Police Department practices after a series of fatal police shootings of Black people — including the April 2021 killing of 16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant — and the city's response to the 2020 racial injustice protests, the Associated Press reported. For Columbus residents, and for readers in Ohio's Punjabi and wider immigrant communities who follow police-accountability cases because they involve the same warrant-service and use-of-force rules that apply in every neighborhood, Wednesday's outcome closes the criminal chapter with supervision instead of prison, and moves the remaining argument — over money damages and responsibility — into the civil courtroom.