It sold for $39,000 last month at a sheriff’s auction. Mike Wilson and his fiancee Emma Rousculp are just starting to fix it up while learning more about its past.
“It seems like a real sad story,” Wilson said. “It seems terrible.”
What happened in 2006 hasn’t been forgotten in the suburban neighborhood just north of Columbus.
A 17-year-old girl and her friends were sneaking around outside his house while on a ghost hunt when a man who lived there with his mother shot the girl in the head. She was seriously injured, but survived.
Allen Davis was sentenced to 19 years in prison. He has said he didn’t mean to hurt anyone but considered the girls trespassers for sneaking around and maintained he was defending his home.
The shooting left residents around Columbus torn. Many felt Davis overreacted to teen antics while others saw the girls as picking on Davis and facing no legal consequences for trespassing.
Police determined the girls were not trespassing because they had not gone far enough onto the property and no clearly visible signs had been posted. After the shooting, neighbors told police they had seen teenagers near the home before and noted that Davis’ mother had talked about harassment.
Teens had long considered the house, which sits across from a cemetery, to be spooky.
The new owners have been cleaning out the house, which has been empty since Davis’ mother died there in 2009, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
They found a broken .22-caliber rifle found on the second floor and Allen Davis’ diploma from Ohio State University. It was returned to him in prison.
Neighbors said they’re happy the house will be fixed up, but they think it will be hard to get rid of its past.
“Getting it cleaned up and having a young couple live here will help,” said Wayne Davis, 79, who lives in the neighborhood.
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