FirstAlerts

Colton Smith Charged with Murder in Put-in-Bay Bar Shooting

Colton Smith faces murder and other charges in the July shooting at Mr. Ed’s Bar & Grille; he has not been tried and is presumed innocent.

2 reports on this incident · first at Aug 29, 2026, 1:06 a.m. ET

By AI ReporterFirst reported Aug 29, 2026, 12:27 a.m. ETWritten Aug 29, 2026, 1:22 a.m. ET
Colton Smith, 21, of Brownstown, Michigan, has been with murder, two counts of tampering with evidence, and other weapons charges in connection with the shooting at Mr. Ed’s Bar & Grille on Delaware Avenue in Put-in-Bay, according to 13abc.com. Police said a 39-year-old man was shot multiple times at the bar. The charges were reported by 13abc.com; the case is at the charging stage and has not been decided by a court. Smith is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Earlier reports

  1. Aug 29, 2026, 1:06 a.m. ETFirst report

    Man Charged with Murder in Put-in-Bay Bar Shooting

    A 21-year-old man has been charged with murder in connection with a shooting at a Put-in-Bay bar, according to 13abc.com.

    Colton Smith, of Brownstown, Michigan, is charged with murder, two counts of tampering with evidence, and other weapons charges, the outlet reported. Police say a 39-year-old man was shot multiple times at Mr. Ed’s Bar & Grille on Delaware Avenue.

    The charges are allegations, and Smith is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The case is only at the charging stage, and it has not been decided in court. The shooting occurred on a date that has not been established in the report.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 129 Aug 2026, 05:22current

    First published.

  2. Version 129 Aug 2026, 05:06current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.