Jehad Alzaben, a 47-year-old man, spent the late hours of Memorial Day weekend tending to Livingston Market, the east Columbus carryout he owned and was known to guard with quiet pride. Just before midnight on May 25, 2025, gunfire shattered the routine. Officers were called to the 1600 block of East Livingston Avenue and found the 47-year-old male gravely wounded inside his store.
He was rushed to Grant Medical Center and, despite efforts to save him, was pronounced a short time later in the early minutes of May 26. Outside, neighbors gathered quickly, speaking of a storekeeper who watched over the corner and looked out for people; by the next day, candles and roses had begun to cluster on the windshield of his still-parked car.
Detectives retraced the final hour with the help of surveillance footage and receipts. According to court records described by reporters, a 21-year-old customer—later identified as Joshua Norfleet—appeared on camera making multiple purchases in the 47-year-old male victim's shop that evening. The affidavit says the same individual then returned wearing a mask and a dark hoodie with white drawstrings, shot the 47-year-old man several times, removed the store owner's firearm from his holster, and fled north on Fairwood Avenue. Those details, coupled with the video and credit card transactions matching the date and time, formed the backbone of the case that followed.
Within days, mourners organized a vigil in front of Livingston Market, remembering the 47-year-old male victim as a steady presence—someone who donated to youth sports and kept a watchful eye on the block. A state representative joined calls for justice, noting that the 47-year-old man was considered a pillar of the neighborhood. The storefront that once bustled with regulars became a place of quiet testimony to how much he mattered to the surrounding streets.
On June 12, 2025, U.S. Marshals located and arrested Joshua Norfleet in Coshocton County, nearly 80 miles from Columbus. Police announced that an arrest warrant had been obtained charging the 21-year-old with murder in the killing of the 47-year-old male shopkeeper. Newsrooms reported that the suspect was taken into custody without incident and later extradited to Franklin County; days afterward, he faced arraignment on the murder charge while detectives continued gathering evidence. The arrest did not erase the grief along East Livingston Avenue, but it marked a turn from uncertainty to the slow, methodical pace of the courts.
Even as candles burned down and flowers wilted, the story of Jehad Alzaben, the 47-year-old man whose life and labor were centered in a small market, remained fixed in the neighborhood's memory. He is listed among those lost to gun violence on May 25, 2025, in Columbus, a stark entry that belies the full measure of the person behind it. What endures in the aftermath are the records—police timelines, affidavits, and an arrest—and the recollections of the regulars who knew the 47-year-old male proprietor as more than a name in a headline.
