Tyshawn Hancock’s family wonders whether or not he was targeted for death by probation officers trained to kill because of his affiliation with the sovereignty movement. Here’s what happened the last day of his life.

Probation pick-up or assassination squad?

Laura Roberts heard a banging on the door. It was July 10, 2014. Her husband answered the door and found a probation officer in plain clothes wanting to see his grandson. It was not his grandson’s usual probation officer. He knocked on his grandson’s door to tell him. As her husband came down the stairs, Officer John Farnsworth entered the house with his gun drawn. The officer entered Tyshawn’s bedroom before he could come out to greet him.
Next thing Mrs. Roberts knew, a shot rang out. The bullet went into the hallway of their home over her head, hit the top of a door, and landed near her eight-year-old great-granddaughter and three-year-old great-grandson.
Later, Farnsworth would say he saw Tyshawn reach for a gun. Mrs. Roberts did not see any gun in her grandson’s hand.
Mikeea Hancock, Tyshawn’s sister and the mother of the two children in the house, told The Free Press, “My three-year-old was ten feet from the shooting.”
Mrs. Roberts said, “It was awful close, I never heard a shot so loud. I can’t even describe it.”
Another shot went into the ceiling in Tyshawn’s room. Farnsworth was on top of Tyshawn in the bed, wrestling him into a corner. A second probation officer, Kenneth Rovenko, came in the room and joined his partner in wrestling with Tyshawn. Then there was three shots – Pop! Pop! Pop!
Mrs. Roberts heard someone say they had been shot.
She had seen Farnsworth with a gun and knew he had it drawn while wrestling her grandson into a corner. Farnsworth was on top of him in the corner, and her grandson was shot. At the hospital “they told us Tyshawn had ‘expired’ but wouldn’t show us his body. He was already removed and at the police coroner,” Christine Pollard, Tyshawn’s cousin, remembered.
The coroner’s report would tell the family later that a bullet went into his back, into his heart, and into his lung.
In the meantime, Officer Farnsworth claimed he had been shot as well, under his bullet-proof vest. After the shooting at Tyshawn’s residence, Officer Rovenko was on the phone with a dispatcher while Officer Farnsworth sat on the bed “as if nothing had happened,” Mrs. Roberts claimed. Later, the family was told Farnsworth was in the hospital in critical condition, which was odd, they thought, since they had seen him walk out of their house “on his own” after killing Tyshawn.
Although Farnsworth was said to be in critical condition, Tyshawn’s family said the officer neither took any time off work, nor was he put on any kind of leave after the deadly incident, pending an investigation.

Slain man filed sovereignty papers

Witnesses told the family they had seen two white men park and get out of their car by the residence and put on bullet proof vests. They were not wearing uniforms. Then, one went to the front door, and one went around to the back of the house. Officer Farnsworth is a trained professional shooter and the head of several shooting clubs, the family told The Free Press.
The family wonders: what were two white plainclothes officers with bullet-proof vests and guns, one a trained killer, prepared for when they were sent to Tyshawn’s house? Neither of the men were Tyshawn’s probation officer, and they don’t believe he knew either one. Why didn’t Farnsworth wait for the grandfather to fetch him? Why did he go upstairs and barrel into his room with a gun drawn?
Tyshawn, a barber, weighed in at only 120 pounds. Tyshawn’s offense did not include a weapon, he was not considered a dangerous threat to society, and he had no major restrictions on his probation except to report for probationary meetings.
Tyshawn was on felony probation for getting into a fight in a bar and biting another man’s nostril. No weapons were used in the fight. Tyshawn’s side of the story revealed that he was being choked and was trying to get free, his family recounted.
As it happened, Tyshawn had failed to report for a visit with his probation officer. In fact, he had recently signed paperwork at the Ohio Attorney General’s office declaring himself a sovereign person, not under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government or the state of Ohio. This is part of a far right-wing white movement, with few blacks involved.
In a 2013 10TV news story, an FBI official referred to sovereign citizens as “domestic terrorists.” The article also quoted a police chief calling them “anti-government extremists.”
Just this past February, The Columbus Dispatch published an article entitled “'Sovereign citizens can be risk for police.” The article tells of law enforcement using special precautions when confronting a known sovereign citizen and that, “instead of confronting Mark Kulis at his North Side house last month, the deputies waited until they could stop him in his car.”
However, in the Dispatch article, a Columbus FBI agent with expertise in domestic terrorism stated that the majority of sovereign citizens are not violent.
Tyshawn’s family told The Free Press that the day Tyshawn had scheduled to file more papers declaring his sovereignty, he was killed. The family’s minister suspects “they sent a message by sending in a professional killer.”
Neighbors told the family that probation officers had come around, asking about Tyshawn. A few days before his death, Tyshawn was pulled over twice, but not held. If he was wanted for not reporting for probation, the family wondered why he was not held then. “If the police had kept him, he’d be alive today,” Mikeea mused.

Columbus: A prayer away of Ferguson

“To see your grandson murdered right in front of you, it’s devastating,” Mrs. Roberts said.
She recalled that Rovenko, the second probation officer at the scene of the killing, actually apologized to her husband. When Mr. Roberts asked “What kind of procedure was that?” the second officer said, “I wasn’t the first one there…”
Minister Kujenga Ashe, a friend of the family, has tried to get them some help. He has connected them with the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil Liberties Union, and helped them employ an attorney.
“It’s like a modern day lynching. You don’t see officers going into Bexley and shooting down white kids. Black youth are expendable – nobody cares about them,” Ashe stated, “The South Linden community has 29 percent unemployment. Young boys go around selling pot, go to jail for it, all while it’s legal in Colorado and other places.”
“It’s the 21st century and it’s like there’s been a turnaround – unarmed black youth are shot --- hands up,” Ashe said.
Ashe reflected on how police shootings of black men have been going on for decades in Columbus. He related the stories of two other black people he knew who were killed by police. Sixteen-year-old Calvin Reynolds was shot in the back for stealing an 8-track tape. Keith Burke was joyriding in a cab, shot in the back and killed. The father of Mikeea’s children had also been shot by the police and is now paralyzed.
“Columbus is one prayer away from Ferguson,” Ashe surmised.
“We sympathize with the Brown family,” Mikeea said, referring Michael Brown, shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, “’cause we’re going through the same thing.”
Jacque noted, “I feel bad for Brown’s mother. There’s nothing we can do to stop what they’re doing. We just got to keep fighting.”
“It happened years ago, and it’s still happening,” Mikeea said. “Maybe in Columbus, we’re just not mad enough yet.”