A silent bar video became central to the prosecution of Joseph Howard, now serving a life sentence with parole possible after decades.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Surveillance video from outside a Columbus bar captured the confrontation that became the core of a double-murder case against Joseph Howard, showing a fight, his intervention and the gunfire that left his sister and another woman dead. Nearly three years later, Howard has been sentenced to life in prison, with possible parole after 49 years.
The video itself had no audio, but its images became an important part of the public court record long before Howard’s July 2026 convictions. In a 2024 appellate decision about pretrial detention, the Ohio Tenth District Court of Appeals recounted testimony from Columbus police Detective Arthur Hughes, who described what investigators said the recording showed at about 11:27 p.m. on Sept. 13, 2023. That evidence, together with witness identification, cellphone-location data and latent fingerprints, helped authorities place Howard at the scene. A jury later convicted him of aggravated murder, murder, aggravated robbery, felonious assault and tampering with evidence.
The court’s account begins with two 24-year-old women: Taya Mollette, Howard’s sister, and Tavia Copley. They were in a physical altercation outside the bar when Copley pinned Mollette to the ground and struck her, according to Hughes’ testimony as summarized by the appellate court. Another man tried unsuccessfully to pull Copley away. Howard entered the fight by kicking Copley several times. The footage then showed him pull a handgun from his waistband and fire multiple rounds. Three people were hit: Copley, Mollette and Daniel Brumfield, a man whom the appellate court said had not been participating in the fight and was standing nearby.
Because the recording had no sound, it could not itself establish what anyone shouted. Hughes nevertheless told the court that investigators had received information that Howard told Copley to get off his sister before he began shooting. The distinction matters because later accounts often highlight those words, while the appellate ruling carefully separated what the camera showed from what investigators learned from other sources. The court also recorded Hughes’ conclusion that Howard’s gun appeared to jam during the shooting. A live round recovered at the scene and the detective’s review of the footage supported that inference, he testified. After the apparent malfunction was cleared, Howard fired at Copley again at close range.
The same pretrial record documented what happened immediately afterward. The appellate court said Howard ran after another man, referred to in the ruling by initials, and took his cellphone at gunpoint before fleeing. Other reporting on the case said Howard also tried to interfere while the wounded Brumfield attempted to call 911. Copley was pronounced dead at the scene. Mollette was transported to a hospital and later pronounced dead. Brumfield survived after surgery. Those different outcomes created separate parts of the eventual criminal case: two homicide prosecutions, an assault case tied to Brumfield and an aggravated-robbery allegation tied to the phone.
Investigators then worked backward from the recording to identify and locate the shooter. Hughes testified that Howard’s mother identified her son in a still frame from the surveillance video. Investigators also obtained cell-site location information and lifted latent prints from the hood of a car that Howard could be seen touching in the footage, according to the appellate decision. A witness identified Howard from a police photo array. Police recovered two weapons in the area, one in an alley and another in or near the bar, but the appeals court noted that the record before it did not show that either was Howard’s gun. That is one example of a fact the court left unresolved rather than treating as established.
Howard was arrested about two weeks later at a relative’s home in Florida. The appellate record says the arrest was made without incident and that Howard waived an extradition hearing before he was returned to Ohio. It also says the record did not establish whether any firearm was taken from him at the time of his arrest. A Franklin County grand jury returned an 11-count indictment on Oct. 17, 2023. The charges included one count of aggravated murder, four counts of murder, attempted murder and aggravated robbery, with firearm specifications attached to all 11 offenses. Howard pleaded not guilty at his arraignment three days later.
Before the case reached a jury, prosecutors sought to keep Howard jailed without bail. Ohio law required the judge to weigh several kinds of information, including the nature of the charged offenses, the strength of the evidence, Howard’s personal history and the potential danger posed by release. The hearing was not a substitute for trial, and the normal rules of evidence do not apply in exactly the same way at that stage. That made the appellate decision a useful record of the investigation while also limiting what could fairly be treated as a final finding before a jury heard the case. At an Oct. 26, 2023, hearing, Hughes described the surveillance recording and the other evidence gathered during the investigation. The trial judge granted the state’s request and later entered a formal order denying bail. Howard appealed. The Tenth District Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling in December 2024. Its decision did not decide whether Howard was guilty; instead, it reviewed whether the prosecution had met Ohio’s standards for holding a defendant without bail while serious felony charges were pending. The judges concluded that the trial court had not abused its discretion.
The appellate panel also recorded personal history that did not fit a simple picture of a repeat offender. Howard was 19 at the time of the shooting, had no prior criminal history, had lived in Columbus throughout his life, had family ties in the community and owned a lawn-care business. Hughes acknowledged that Howard’s Florida arrest had been peaceful and that he did not contest extradition. Those facts were part of the bail analysis. Even so, the court found that the violent nature of the charged conduct and the strength of the evidence presented at the hearing supported continued detention. The ruling kept Howard in custody while the underlying criminal case proceeded.
The legal posture changed in July 2026, when a jury convicted Howard following trial. Unlike the earlier bail decision, the verdict represented the jury’s resolution of the criminal charges presented to it. The distinction matters because the 2024 opinion repeatedly described prosecution evidence in the context of detention rather than final guilt. By 2026, the case had moved from allegations and pretrial findings to convictions that could support punishment. Reporting on the verdict and sentencing says he was found guilty of aggravated murder, murder, aggravated robbery, felonious assault and tampering with evidence. On Aug. 6, the court imposed a series of prison terms that together amount to a life sentence with possible parole after 49 years. Howard received 30 years to life for Copley’s aggravated murder and 15 years to life for Mollette’s murder. The court also imposed eight to 12 years for the assault of Brumfield, five to 7 1/2 years for aggravated robbery, 24 months for tampering with evidence and six additional years tied to firearm specifications.
Seen through the evidence trail, the case moved from a camera without sound to a set of corroborating investigative steps and, ultimately, a jury verdict. The recording documented the physical sequence but not every word; witnesses and police testimony supplied other pieces. Fingerprint and cellphone-location evidence supported Howard’s presence, while the court acknowledged limits in the record concerning the weapons recovered nearby. That mix of direct visual evidence, identification testimony and circumstantial evidence first appeared publicly in the bail litigation and later formed part of a prosecution that ended in multiple convictions.
The latest confirmed court action came Aug. 6, when the judge sentenced Howard following the jury’s July guilty verdicts. That hearing marked the end of the trial-court proceedings covered by the available record, nearly three years after the shootings outside Double D’s. Any further litigation would proceed from those convictions and the resulting sentence, rather than the pretrial detention issues that had earlier reached the appeals court.
Author note: Last updated September 22, 2026.