A veteran guard is gunned down outside a Columbus bank days before Christmas, turning a planned robbery into an execution that rattles a city built on service. We trace the ambush, the shootout, the verdicts, and the questions about motive that still press on the case.

• the ambush at SouthTrust Bank and the rapid escalation into a shootout
• John Hamilton’s service, family, and the community impact of his death
• roles of Leon Tollette, Xavier Womack, and Jake Robinson in the plan
• close-range gunfire and prosecutorial framing as execution
• Tollette’s guilty plea, death sentence, and decades of appeals
• Womack and Robinson’s armed robbery convictions and legal distinctions
• media response and the widow’s statement shaping public memory
• the enduring question of why the trigger was pulled again and again
• what predictable security routines risk and how they evolve

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What do you think? Was Tallettte always going to pull the trigger, no matter what? Or could Hamilton have lived if things had gone differently that day?

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