Ryan Casey was a 27-year-old Black man and a father from Cincinnati, Ohio, whose family remembers him for his unforgettable smile. His father, Robert Casey, recalled it as a smile “that was worth a million dollars” and vividly remembered their last conversation the day before his son was killed, a talk that gave no hint of the tragedy to come.
On the morning of September 3, 2021, around 9:15 a.m., Cincinnati police responded to a call at an apartment in the 3600 block of Northdale
Place in the Kennedy Heights neighborhood. Inside, they found Ryan Casey suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators with the Cincinnati Police Department’s Homicide Unit believed the shooting was a targeted attack and not a random act of violence. Multiple people who were inside the apartment at the time were interviewed by police.
Nearly a year later, in July 2022, a Hamilton County grand jury indicted two men, Corey Ringer and Kameron Scott, for Casey’s murder. Both men were also charged with having weapons while under disability, as they were convicted felons. The indictment revealed a painful connection: Scott had been a childhood friend of Casey, and the two had grown up as next-door neighbors in Kennedy Heights.
The legal proceedings that followed were marked by numerous delays and judicial changes, causing deep frustration for Casey’s family, who attended court hearings in their long pursuit of justice. At one point in late 2025, after plea negotiations broke down on the eve of a trial, the presiding judge recused himself from Scott’s case, leading to further postponements and uncertainty.
In October 2026, Kameron Scott pleaded guilty to the lesser charges of involuntary manslaughter, having weapons under disability, and improper discharge of a firearm. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. As of that month, his co-defendant, Corey Ringer, still faced the original murder charges. Ringer’s trial was scheduled to begin in January 2027.
