Charges dropped after five months in jail: man freed in Toledo festival shooting that wounded 12

Prosecutors in Ohio on Friday dropped the charges against a man arrested over the shooting at Toledo's Old West End festival, and he was released. The man, 20-year-old Eljay Crisp-Carr, had been held in connection with the 6 June shooting, in which 12 people were injured.

Crisp-Carr had faced more than 50 felony charges, including 25 counts of attempted murder. Before the charges were dropped, he had spent about five months behind bars.

At a hearing on Friday before Judge Lori Olender of the Lucas County Court of Common Pleas, prosecutors asked the court to dismiss the charges against Crisp-Carr. The court granted that request.

His mother, April Carr, said she was ecstatic at the outcome. She said no mother wants her child broadcast across the world for something he did not do.

Crisp-Carr's defence team believes another person involved in the shooting remains at large. His defence attorney, Alex Bodiford, said their concern is that the person who actually did the shooting may still be out there and may still be shooting.

Local reporting said Crisp-Carr's attorneys had argued that he was not even at the festival when the shooting occurred. According to that reporting, his lawyers said they had video and cellphone evidence supporting his alibi.

The Lucas County prosecutor's office explained its decision in a statement to the media on Friday morning. It said that, due to new and developing evidence, the state had asked the court to dismiss the charges, and the court had granted the request. The dismissal was without prejudice, meaning charges can be refiled if necessary. The office also said that in September 2026 it had informed Crisp-Carr's attorney of discovery that may support his defence.

The statement also addressed the investigation, saying the Toledo Police Department continues its investigation. It said both the department and the prosecutor's office remain committed to following the evidence and getting it right, and that, as was said after the shooting in June, the case will be tried in a courtroom, not in a court of public opinion.

After the charges were dropped, Crisp-Carr said, 'God is good.' He maintained that he had always known he was innocent and believed authorities had mistaken him for someone else. Asked whether the mistaken identification came from photographs, he said yes. He also said he had tried to explain to authorities that he was not the individual in the photograph, but was told he was a monster and was incriminated.

Hundreds of people had been attending the annual festival in a historic district of Toledo when the shooting erupted. According to the earlier account, a fight between rival groups escalated into two people shooting at each other, although those two were not among the wounded. Organizers cancelled the event's second day because of the shooting.

Toledo is a city on the western edge of Lake Erie. As of Friday, there had been more than 385 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan resource that defines such cases as those in which four or more victims are wounded or killed.