Police Confront Knife-Wielding Suspect After Three People Are Stabbed at Columbus Home

A 911 Call Turns Into a Critical Incident

On the afternoon of June 25, 2024, Columbus police officers were sent to a home on the city’s Far East Side after emergency callers reported that a man was stabbing people. Within minutes, officers arrived at the 300 block of Hoskins Way and found a chaotic scene already in progress.

Body-worn camera footage from the incident shows officers confronting a man later identified in court records as Benjamin Paul Kelch. He was on or near the front porch holding a knife while an injured man was nearby. Officers repeatedly ordered him to drop the weapon.

The encounter escalated in seconds. One officer attempted to use a Taser, but the first deployment did not stop Kelch. As he moved toward the wounded man on the porch, officers fired their handguns. Another Taser deployment then incapacitated him, allowing officers to move in, restrain him and immediately begin providing medical aid.

At first, police reported three stabbing victims and said all were expected to survive. That changed weeks later. One of those victims, Kelch’s 95-year-old father, James Kelch, died on August 1. Prosecutors then added a murder charge to the case.

The video therefore captures more than an armed confrontation between police and a suspect. It records the final minutes of a family emergency that later became a homicide case.

The First Calls Come in Around 2:50 P.M.

Columbus police said the emergency began shortly before 3 p.m. on Tuesday, June 25.

The Division of Police’s official news release states that officers were dispatched at approximately 2:49 p.m. to the 300 block of Hoskins Way for a report of a male with a knife stabbing multiple people.

Local reporting based on police and court records places the first calls at roughly 2:50 to 2:55 p.m.

The slight difference in reported times does not change the central sequence. Multiple callers were seeking urgent police help, officers were dispatched, and the body-camera timestamps show them arriving within minutes.

A second 911 call came from a woman at the home. According to reporting on the released calls, she said Kelch had tried to stab her and told dispatchers that he was also cutting himself while officers were on the way.

That information meant responding officers were approaching a scene where several people might already be injured and the reported attacker was still armed.

The Bodycam Timestamp Matches the Official Timeline

The uploaded video provides an important verification point.

Its AXON overlay shows June 25, 2024, at approximately 2:57 p.m. Eastern time. That places the footage only minutes after the first emergency calls described by Columbus police.

The setting also matches news coverage: a residential neighborhood, a front porch, multiple Columbus officers and emergency vehicles arriving around the home.

This alignment between the footage, the official police release and local reporting makes the incident identifiable with high confidence.

It also prevents a common problem in bodycam reporting: attaching a dramatic clip to a different case simply because the events look similar.

Officers Find an Armed Man on the Porch

When officers reached the house, they encountered Kelch holding a knife.

The Columbus Division of Police later said officers located both the suspect and several victims outside the residence.

Bodycam footage shows the officers focusing immediately on the weapon. Their commands are direct and repeated. They tell Kelch to drop the knife.

He does not immediately comply.

The officers are also dealing with another problem: a wounded person is on the porch close to the armed man.

That proximity is crucial to understanding what happens next. Officers are not confronting an isolated person holding a knife at a distance. According to police and court records, Kelch was moving toward a man who had already been injured.

The First Taser Attempt Does Not Stop Him

Police initially attempted a less-lethal response.

An officer deployed a Taser, but the first attempt did not successfully incapacitate Kelch.

Bodycam and later reporting show how quickly the tactical problem changed after that attempt failed.

Kelch continued moving while still holding the knife.

Columbus police said officers had issued several commands for him to drop it. The injured man remained close by.

The failure of the first Taser left officers with only seconds to decide what to do next.

Gunfire and a Second Taser Deployment

As Kelch moved toward the wounded man on the porch, officers fired their handguns.

The Columbus Dispatch’s review of the bodycam identified the officers in the released footage as James LaFollette, Alec Palmer and David Wrenn. Based on the videos, the Dispatch reported that Palmer and LaFollette appeared to fire their handguns while Wrenn was involved in the Taser deployments.

The official police release was initially more cautious, stating that at least one officer discharged a firearm and one officer deployed a Taser.

After the gunfire, another Taser deployment successfully incapacitated Kelch.

Officers then moved forward and took him into custody.

The sequence happens extremely quickly on video. Repeated commands, an unsuccessful Taser deployment, movement toward an injured person, gunfire and the successful second Taser occur within a compressed period in which officers have little time to reassess.

The Officers Immediately Switch to Medical Aid

One of the most important parts of the footage comes after Kelch is restrained.

The officers’ role changes almost instantly.

They are no longer focused only on stopping an armed threat. They begin assessing injuries and providing emergency aid.

The video shows officers working around Kelch while other responders deal with the wounded people at the home. Officers discuss injuries, request or coordinate medical assistance and continue securing the scene.

This transition is easy to overlook in short social-media edits. The arrest is not the end of the emergency. It is the point at which officers and paramedics can begin treating everyone who has been hurt.

Three People Had Been Stabbed

Police initially reported three stabbing victims.

All three were transported to hospitals. Early updates said they were in stable condition and expected to survive.

Court records and subsequent reporting described one of the injured people as the man on the porch whom officers saw Kelch approaching while armed with the knife.

Inside the home, officers found additional evidence of the violence that had occurred before their arrival.

Reporting on the released bodycam noted blood visible on floors and in rooms as Officer LaFollette searched the residence for any additional victims.

The footage therefore begins near the end of the physical attack, not at its beginning. Much of what led to the 911 calls had already happened before the first officer stepped onto the property.

Kelch Was Also Seriously Injured

Kelch himself was taken to a hospital in critical condition and was later upgraded to stable condition.

There was initial uncertainty about exactly how he received all of his injuries.

Police confirmed that an officer fired a gun. Bodycam audio later included officers referring to what appeared to be a gunshot injury. The 911 calls and footage also indicated that Kelch had cuts that appeared to be self-inflicted.

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation was assigned to determine the circumstances surrounding the police gunfire.

That distinction matters. Columbus police investigated the stabbings, while BCI handled the officer-involved shooting investigation.

Early news reports therefore correctly avoided making a definitive claim about which injury came from which source before investigators completed their evidence review.

The Suspect Is Identified as Benjamin Kelch

Court records identified the suspect as Benjamin Paul Kelch of Columbus.

Early news reports gave different ages, ranging from 64 to 66. Later reporting surrounding the murder charge described him as 67.

Rather than treating one of those inconsistent early ages as definitive, the more important identifying facts are his full name, the Hoskins Way location and the June 25 date.

Kelch remained hospitalized under police custody after the incident.

The first criminal charge publicly reported against him was felonious assault.

The Initial Felonious Assault Charge

On June 26, local media reported that Kelch had been charged with one count of felonious assault.

At that point, the three people who had been stabbed were still being reported as survivors.

A witness who was also injured identified Kelch as the person responsible, according to later court-based reporting.

The felonious assault charge was an allegation, not a conviction.

That legal distinction is particularly important with bodycam footage because video can make an incident feel complete even when the criminal case has only just begun.

Police Release the Bodycam Two Days Later

Columbus police released body-camera footage on June 27.

The department also publicly identified the three officers involved: James LaFollette, who joined the department in January 2013; Alec Palmer, who joined in March 2024; and David Wrenn, who joined in July 2020.

The footage gave the public a direct view of the confrontation that had previously been described mainly through a short police statement.

It showed the repeated commands to drop the knife, the Taser attempt, the movement on the porch, the gunfire, the arrest and the medical response.

The uploaded video is a longer edited presentation built around that released footage, including 911 audio and explanatory material.

Why the Porch Matters

The geography of the scene is central to the officers’ decision-making.

A front porch is a confined space.

There are columns, furniture, railings, steps and people positioned close together.

The wounded man on the porch had little room to create distance from someone approaching with a knife.

Responding officers were outside the immediate porch area and had to react from several yards away.

Those physical constraints help explain why the encounter escalated so rapidly after the first Taser attempt failed.

A Knife Creates a Different Kind of Distance Problem

A knife does not have the range of a firearm, but distance can disappear quickly when people are only a few steps apart.

In the Hoskins Way footage, the critical issue is not an abstract rule about how far away a knife can be dangerous.

It is the actual scene visible to the officers.

An armed man is close to an already wounded person.

Commands have not produced compliance.

The first Taser attempt has failed.

The suspect continues moving.

Those are the facts that matter when analyzing the seconds before officers fire.

BCI Investigates the Police Shooting

Because Columbus officers discharged firearms, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation opened an investigation into the police use of force.

This is separate from the criminal investigation into the stabbings.

The division of responsibility is important.

BCI investigators can examine body-camera footage, firearms, cartridge cases, the Taser deployments, officer statements, medical evidence and the physical layout of the scene.

Their role is not to determine whether Kelch committed the underlying stabbings. Columbus police remained responsible for that investigation.

Keeping those two investigations separate avoids confusing the alleged crime that brought officers to the home with the legal review of what officers did after arriving.

The Case Changes on August 1

For more than a month, the case remained publicly understood as a triple stabbing in which the victims had survived.

Then one victim died.

James Kelch, Benjamin Kelch’s 95-year-old father, died on August 1 from injuries connected to the June 25 attack, according to later court-based reporting.

That death fundamentally changed the criminal case.

What had begun with a felonious assault charge now included a homicide allegation.

A Murder Charge Is Added

In August 2024, Franklin County Municipal Court records showed that prosecutors had added a murder charge against Benjamin Kelch in connection with his father’s death.

Local reporting stated that James Kelch died as a result of the stab wound he suffered during the June incident.

At an August hearing, Judge Mark Hummer set a combined bond reported at $600,000.

The murder charge remains an allegation unless and until resolved by a guilty plea or conviction.

The public sources reviewed for this article clearly document the addition of the charge, but they do not provide a later final conviction or sentencing outcome that can be independently verified here. For that reason, this article does not invent one.

The Victim Was the Suspect’s Father

The later identification of James Kelch adds a painful family dimension to the case.

The initial police release simply referred to stabbing victims.

Only later reporting made clear that the man who died was the suspect’s father.

Other reports described the incident as involving several relatives.

That context changes how the 911 calls and bodycam are understood. Officers were not responding to an attack between strangers in a public place. They were entering the aftermath of violence inside a family residence.

What the Video Does Not Tell Us

The footage is powerful, but it does not explain motive.

It does not establish why the stabbing began.

It does not show the complete sequence inside the house before officers arrived.

It cannot by itself establish criminal intent for a murder charge.

It also cannot substitute for medical evidence establishing the cause and manner of James Kelch’s death.

Those questions belong to the broader criminal case.

A responsible reconstruction should resist filling those gaps with assumptions.

Why the 911 Calls Matter

The emergency calls provide information that bodycam cannot.

They tell us what people inside the home were reporting before police arrived.

According to reporting on the released calls, one caller described a stabbing, while another woman said Kelch had tried to stab her and was injuring himself.

That information helps explain why officers approached the house expecting an active knife threat rather than a completed incident.

It also shows that the emergency was evolving during the response.

The callers were not simply reporting something that had happened minutes earlier. They were describing behavior that was continuing as police drove toward the address.

Why the Bodycam Is Important Evidence

Body-worn cameras preserve details that can be difficult to reconstruct from memory alone.

The recording captures officer positions, commands, timing, distance, movement and the transition from force to medical care.

It also allows the public to compare the department’s initial description with what the cameras recorded.

In this case, the broad sequence in the official release is visible in the footage: officers arrive, encounter an armed man, issue commands, deploy a Taser, gunfire occurs, another Taser is used and the suspect is taken into custody.

But bodycam still represents individual camera perspectives. It should be considered alongside the other recordings and physical evidence.

The First Reports Were Necessarily Incomplete

Breaking-news coverage on June 25 could not know that James Kelch would die more than a month later.

It also could not immediately determine the source of every injury to Benjamin Kelch.

That is why early reports said all three stabbing victims were expected to survive and described uncertainty over whether police gunfire had struck the suspect.

Those reports were not necessarily wrong at the time. They reflected the information then available.

The later death and murder charge demonstrate why serious police incidents need follow-up reporting rather than a single article frozen at the moment of arrest.

The Officers’ Identities Become Public

The release of the officers’ names also gave the incident more specificity.

James LaFollette was the most experienced of the three officers identified in local reporting, having joined Columbus police in 2013.

David Wrenn had joined in 2020.

Alec Palmer had joined only a few months before the incident, in March 2024.

Their differing service histories are factual background, but they should not be used to speculate about what any officer was thinking.

The bodycam and investigative record are stronger evidence than assumptions based on tenure.

Why Medical Aid Is Part of the Story

The footage after the arrest is not merely an epilogue.

It shows officers confronting the practical consequences of the violence.

There are multiple injured people.

The suspect is injured.

The house has to be searched for additional victims.

Paramedics need safe access.

Weapons must be secured.

The scene must be preserved for investigators.

The officers move from an immediate threat response into a combined rescue and crime-scene role.

That transition is one of the most revealing parts of the video.

A Case With Two Separate Questions

There are ultimately two major legal questions arising from Hoskins Way.

The first concerns the stabbings and the death of James Kelch.

That is the criminal case against Benjamin Kelch.

The second concerns the officers’ use of firearms.

That is the officer-involved shooting investigation handled by BCI.

The existence of one does not automatically answer the other.

Even when police are responding to a serious alleged crime, their use of force is still subject to review.

Likewise, the fact that police fired does not determine whether the suspect committed the underlying offenses.

What Can Be Stated With Confidence

Several core facts are strongly supported by the uploaded video, Columbus police records and local reporting.

The incident occurred on June 25, 2024, at a home in the 300 block of Hoskins Way on Columbus’s Far East Side.

Police were dispatched shortly before 3 p.m. after reports of a man stabbing multiple people.

Responding officers encountered Benjamin Kelch holding a knife near injured people.

Officers repeatedly ordered him to drop it.

A Taser was initially unsuccessful.

Officers fired as Kelch moved toward a wounded man on the porch.

A second Taser deployment incapacitated him.

Three stabbing victims were transported to hospitals.

Kelch was also hospitalized.

He was initially charged with felonious assault.

His father, James Kelch, later died, and a murder charge was added.

BCI investigated the police shooting.

What Should Not Be Claimed

The available evidence does not justify inventing a motive.

It does not justify diagnosing Kelch’s mental state.

It does not justify saying that every visible injury was caused by police gunfire.

And because the reviewed public sources do not establish a final disposition of the murder case, it would be inaccurate to write that Kelch was convicted or sentenced for murder.

The strongest police-video stories are often those that clearly identify what remains unknown.

The Most Important Moment Lasts Only Seconds

Viewed in real time, the central confrontation is remarkably brief.

Officers arrive.

They identify the knife.

Commands begin.

A Taser is deployed.

Kelch keeps moving.

Gunshots are fired.

Another Taser is deployed.

The suspect goes down.

Then everyone’s attention shifts toward medical care.

Hours of investigation and months of legal proceedings grow out of decisions made during those few seconds.

That contrast between the speed of the incident and the length of the aftermath is one reason bodycam cases remain so compelling.

From Triple Stabbing to Homicide Case

The story also demonstrates how the legal meaning of an event can change after the cameras stop recording.

On June 25, police believed they had three surviving stabbing victims.

On June 26, Kelch was publicly reported as facing felonious assault.

By late June, bodycam had been released and BCI was investigating the officer gunfire.

Then James Kelch died on August 1.

By mid-August, Benjamin Kelch faced a murder charge in addition to the assault allegation.

The video itself never changes, but the context around it does.

Why the Original Title Needs Context

“Police Stop Man on a Stabbing Rampage” captures the urgency of the initial response, but it does not tell readers what happened afterward.

The more complete story includes the 911 calls, the failed first Taser attempt, the police gunfire, the successful second Taser deployment, the three victims, the later death of James Kelch and the murder charge.

Adding that context turns a dramatic clip into a documented case narrative.

It also prevents the article from relying on sensational wording when the verified facts are already serious enough.

The Lasting Questions

For viewers, the bodycam raises immediate questions about timing and force.

For investigators, the questions are broader.

What happened inside the house before police arrived?

What evidence supports each criminal count?

What caused each injury?

How did James Kelch’s injuries lead to his death?

What did each officer perceive in the seconds before gunfire?

Those questions require witness interviews, medical records, forensic evidence and the complete set of video recordings.

A short online clip can begin the conversation, but it cannot finish the investigation.

A Family Emergency Becomes a Major Police Case

The Hoskins Way incident began with frightened people calling 911 from a home.

Minutes later, three Columbus officers were confronting a knife-wielding man on a porch beside an injured victim.

Within seconds, both less-lethal and lethal force had been used.

Within minutes, officers and paramedics were treating multiple wounded people.

Within a day, a felony assault case had begun.

Weeks later, one of the victims died.

The suspect’s own father became the homicide victim at the center of a murder charge.

That progression is what makes the case more complicated than the brief confrontation seen in the bodycam.

Watch the Full Incident

The full footage is worth watching not for spectacle, but for the sequence of decisions that unfolds in seconds.

Notice how quickly officers identify the knife, how often commands are given, how the first Taser deployment fails to resolve the threat and how the officers react when the armed man moves toward the already wounded person on the porch.

Then continue watching after the arrest.

The shift into emergency medical care, the search for additional victims and the arrival of more responders are essential parts of the incident.

The later court developments add another layer that the original bodycam could never show: James Kelch died on August 1, and prosecutors subsequently added a murder charge against Benjamin Kelch.