Dontai Lamar Davis Rheubottom, a 33-year-old Black man, was killed on August 19, 2015, in a triple homicide at the Shaker Square Apartments in Whitehall, Ohio, just east of Columbus. Rheubottom was one of three people fatally shot at the apartment complex in the 4700 block of Olde Bailey Way near South Hamilton Road. The other victims were 51-year-old Kimberli Alston and 32-year-old Charles Fischer.
Investigators found the victims at the complex and began treating the deaths as a connected homicide investigation.
In the immediate aftermath, witnesses told Whitehall police that the gunman had fled in a vehicle. As detectives reconstructed what had happened, they identified a white Dodge Charger as a getaway vehicle associated with the killings. Investigators also developed 19-year-old Daveron Minnis as one of their suspects. Police publicly indicated that they believed the killings were drug-related, while also making clear that they were looking for additional suspects and trying to determine everyone who had participated.
The search for Minnis quickly extended beyond Ohio. Whitehall investigators entered information about the Dodge Charger into a license-plate-reader system, and on August 24 the vehicle was detected in Jamaica, Queens, New York. Police in New York were notified, but the car was no longer at the location when officers first checked. Another license-plate scan placed the Charger in the same general area the following day. NYPD officers subsequently located the vehicle, followed it, boxed it in, and took Minnis into custody on August 25, 2015. He was held in New York while arrangements were made to return him to Ohio, where authorities said he would face three homicide counts connected with the deaths of Rheubottom, Alston and Fischer.
The criminal case continued well beyond Minnis's initial arrest. In January 2017, when he was 21, Minnis was indicted in Franklin County on 13 criminal counts arising from the triple homicide. Prosecutors accused him of robbing and killing Rheubottom, Alston and Fischer during what authorities described as a drug-related incident. The indictment represented a significant development in the investigation, but the available reporting from that stage described the charges as allegations and did not document a conviction or completed trial.
Despite the arrest and later indictment of Minnis, Rheubottom's homicide remains classified by the Ohio Attorney General's Office as an unsolved homicide. The state lists the case under number 3797 and identifies the Whitehall Police Department and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation as the law-enforcement agencies associated with it. The same state cold-case system continues to list the killings of Kimberli Alston and Charles Fischer as unsolved as well. No additional suspect has been publicly identified in the current state listing, and no conviction resolving Rheubottom's murder is recorded there.
What began as the killing of three people inside a Whitehall apartment complex therefore remains an open case more than a decade later. Investigators succeeded in tracing a suspected getaway vehicle across several states and arrested a man they believed was involved, followed by a multi-count indictment accusing him of robbery and murder. However, the continuing unsolved designation means Dontai Rheubottom's death has not been officially recorded by Ohio authorities as a closed homicide, and investigators continue to seek information capable of establishing who was responsible for the three killings and bringing the case to a final resolution.
