Columbus police identified two men killed Tuesday afternoon at a rental-car parking lot on the East Side. Gary Ashton Francis, 20, and James Earl Miller Jr., 21, were shot as they sat in a car in the Enterprise Rental Car Co. lot at 6501 Tussing Road.

Columbus police identified two men killed Tuesday afternoon at a rental-car parking lot on the East Side.

Gary Ashton Francis, 20, and James Earl Miller Jr., 21, were shot as they sat in a car in the Enterprise Rental Car Co. lot at 6501 Tussing Road. The suspects were in another car, a silver Chevrolet Impala or Malibu, that drove off after the shooting, according to police.

Police found Francis dead in the front passenger seat of a Dodge Charger shortly after 2 p.m. Miller was found alive in an open bay at the rental company. He died about an hour later at OhioHealth Grant Medical Center.

Sgt. Dave Sicilian said the Charger and a Malibu � each with two occupants � pulled onto the lot around the same time but did not appear to have a connection to any of the area businesses.

�They had a really brief conversation, and there was gunfire,� Sicilian said. �Obviously, they knew each other to some extent.� He said the shooter might have reached inside the Charger to begin shooting.

Three landscapers working nearby, who did not want their names used because they feared for their safety, said they heard at least six shots.

A man who identified himself as an Enterprise manager declined to comment, but the landscapers said Enterprise employees told them the business� security system had recorded at least portions of the shooting and as the shooter and his car got away. Sicilian said detectives would review footage from those cameras and others in the plaza, which is just east of Brice Road.

The Malibu was driven by a young woman, Sicilian said. He said the car�s license plate might have been GGG-5326.

The shooting prompted a brief lockdown at nearby Tussing Elementary School, which did not affect dismissal.

Anyone with information is asked to call the homicide squad at 614-645-4730. The deaths were the city�s 22nd and 23rd homicides of 2016.

Dispatch Reporter Earl Rinehart contributed to this story.

tdecker@dispatch.com

@Theodore_Decker