Grooms is currently in the Montgomery County Jail, and is scheduled to be arraigned May 1.
The charges stem from the death of Jordan Ashe, 30, at Palms Lounge at 4950 Old Barn Road Nov. 19, 2024.
Montgomery County Sheriff’s deputies were called to the bar shortly after 1 a.m. and found Ashe on the back patio with gunshot wounds to his chest and right arm, according to an affidavit filed in Vandalia Municipal Court. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Witnesses told investigators that Ashe had been in a physical confrontation with a patron as the guard escorted him out of the rear patio exit. The patron was later identified as Grooms.
According to the affidavit, surveillance video and witness statements indicated that Grooms came back to the bar with a firearm.
Ashe attempted to tackle Grooms to subdue him when two or three shots were fired, hitting the guard, investigators said. Another bar employee used pepper spray on Grooms, and a bar manager disarmed him before Grooms fled in his car, court records said. Grooms reportedly dropped his cellphone during the struggle.
While crews were at the shooting scene, a crash was reported less than a mile away involving a car that matched the description of the shooter’s vehicle, near the intersection of North Main Street and Shiloh Springs Road, Maj. Jeremy Roy said.
The car flipped over in the crash and was heavily damaged, but the driver got out and fled on foot. Attempts to track him by deputies and K9 units were unsuccessful, but witnesses gave a description of the driver that matched the Palms Lounge shooter, the affidavit said.
“We were then able to verify through the registration of the vehicle and BMV photos of the suspect that it matched the description of what everybody was giving us at the homicide scene and crash scene,” Roy said.
Detectives were stationed outside Grooms’ house in Clayton waiting for a search warrant when he returned home with visible injuries consistent with a crash, Roy said.
The affidavit said that deputies detained Grooms, who had bloodied clothing, swollen injuries to his face and smelled like pepper spray.
Grooms told law enforcement that he had been at the Palms Lounge but denied having a gun or being in a confrontation, court records said. He also said he lost his cellphone sometime during the crash.
However, investigators said that inside his house they found a case for a 9mm pistol with the same serial number as the pistol taken from the shooter, as well as clothes that matched the shooter’s in surveillance footage, records said. In addition, they said they pinged Grooms’s phone number, which showed that the phone remained at the bar.
Staff writers Jen Balduf and Kristen Spicker contributed to this story.
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