Grieving Mom Looking for Justice: She Paid for Stadium Flyover, Web Site
By Kevin Mayhood, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
Nov. 11–Before yesterday’s Ohio State football game, one of the planes towing a sign that circled the 100,000-plus fans at Ohio Stadium took off with a special mission.
Crime Stoppers had launched its first airstrike aimed at nabbing a killer.
Debbie Sohovich agreed to use cash she’d raised to increase a $2,000 Crime Stoppers reward to pay instead for the plane and creation of a Web site. She hopes to find the killer of her 27-year-old son, Dustin Jonathan Hart, after months of fruitless leads.
“We need to get him or them off the street as soon as possible,” Sohovich said. She’s concerned that those responsible will find it easier to kill again, having gotten away with shooting her son.
The plane, which towed a banner with the name of her Web site — www.whomurderedmyson.com — later circled the North Linden neighborhood where Hart’s body was found.
Hart, who worked for a home remodeler, was found shot April 30. He had moved to Clintonville from an apartment just west of Northern Lights Shopping Center, the area where he was shot.
Phone records show he received a call about 12:20 a.m. April 30.
Columbus police were searching for an Alzheimer’s patient by helicopter when they spotted him about a half-hour later, lying beside his silver Chevy Malibu near Bremen Street and Huy Road. Hart died that night. His organs were donated to others.
Hart had gotten into minor scrapes as a young adult, but had become a homebody, Sohovich said. She wonders whether someone called him back to his old neighborhood.
Hart’s case, with pictures, a letter from his mother and a plea for help, is the first on the Web site. But Sohovich wants relatives of other murder victims in the Columbus area to post information about their loved ones on the site. They can do that by contacting her through the Web site or Crime Stoppers.
Sohovich, friends and family blanketed the North Linden area with fliers seeking information in August, with little result. But she hasn’t slowed, said Kevin Miles, president of Central Ohio Crime Stoppers.
“She doesn’t want other families to go through the pain and grief her family has.”
kmayhood@dispatch.com
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