Tyris Sowell, a 30-year-old male who was Black, was shot late Tuesday morning, October 7, 2025, inside his tattoo studio on the 3000 block of Templeton Road on Columbus’s East Side. Officers were dispatched at 11:01 a.m.; he was rushed to Grant Medical Center and pronounced dead at 11:26 a.m. The police incident report lists him by name and confirms his age, sex, and race, noting that Homicide Detectives Lemmon and Polgar are leading the investigation.
Detectives later identified a suspect and secured a murder charge against 30-year-old Shaquir Cromwell, who, according to local coverage, knew Sowell; investigators and Sowell’s family publicly urged Cromwell to surrender. Reporting describes a dispute that preceded the gunfire and says Cromwell remained sought by police following the charge.
Community and family tributes painted a picture of Sowell as a rising tattoo artist who had opened his shop about a year earlier and shared his work widely online. Loved ones remembered him as a devoted father—with two children and another on the way—and as a son still being mourned alongside his twin brother, who had died the year prior. Services and memorial postings followed in mid-October as the investigation pressed on.
