Travis Jovan McDaniel, a 27-year-old Black male from Columbus, Georgia, died on February 1, 2019, after a shooting that turned a Friday night on 10th Street into a homicide scene. Contemporary local reporting said Columbus police were called to a residence in the 2300 block of 10th Street after reports that someone had been shot, and when officers arrived they found McDaniel dead from a gunshot wound.
The coroner’s office and the Columbus Police Department’s homicide unit then took over the investigation. Online memorial and obituary notices identify him as a Columbus native born on March 3, 1991, the son of Shera McDaniel and the late Lorenzo Harris, a man who had attended Kendrick High School, worked in maintenance and self-employment, played drums for Prospect A.M.E. Church, and left behind a daughter along with other grieving family members.
What stands out in the reporting is how quickly the case appeared to move in its earliest hours. WTVM reported that by the next day, February 2, 2019, investigators had arrested 54-year-old Edward Lominac in connection with the shooting. According to that report, Lominac was charged with murder and booked into the Muscogee County Jail. That same body of online coverage also tied McDaniel’s death to gun violence in Columbus and placed it among the city’s early homicides of 2019, giving the case the feel of a life cut off suddenly and a family thrown into mourning almost as soon as the news began to spread.
The public record that is easily accessible online paints the opening chapter more clearly than the ending. The victim’s death, the location, and the arrest of Edward Lominac are confirmed in the local television coverage and memorialized in later online references, but I did not find accessible online reporting that clearly documented a later trial, conviction, or final court disposition tied to McDaniel’s killing. What does remain visible is the outline of who Travis Jovan McDaniel was beyond the crime itself: a young Columbus man with family, church ties, work history, and people who remembered him after the violence of that night eclipsed everything else.
