Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Lake Darby, OH

Lake Darby is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Franklin County, Ohio, located mostly in Prairie Township and partly in Brown Township on the western edge of the Columbus metropolitan area.

Lake Darby is named for a lake that was never built - in 1967 the Columbus Dispatch reported that the City of Columbus planned to buy nearly 4,000 acres near Big Darby Creek for a reservoir, and although the Army Corps of Engineers abandoned the project in the 1970s, the housing development that began in the mid-to-late 1960s kept the name.

Locally, Lake Darby is better known by the names of its housing developments: Darby Estates, the older development, and West Point (or Westpoint), the newer one.

Big Darby Creek, a tributary of the Scioto River, forms the western border of Lake Darby as well as the line between Franklin and Madison counties, with the village of West Jefferson directly across the creek.

U.S. Route 40, the historic National Road, runs along the southern edge of Lake Darby, leading east about 13 miles to downtown Columbus.

The 2020 census counted 4,731 people in Lake Darby living in 1,534 households spread over about 3.5 square miles.

Lake Darby is a notably young community - the 2020 census put its median age at just 33.5 years, with 30.6% of residents under 18 and children living in 47.5% of its households.

Lake Darby is split between two school districts: the northern portion attends Hilliard City Schools and the southern portion attends South-Western City Schools.