Columbus police have arrested two suspects in a Wednesday shooting in East Columbus.
Shawn Stallings Jr. of Columbus and Ricky Armstead of Starkville are both charged with two counts of aggravated assault for the incident that started because of a disagreement over an iPad transaction, Police Chief Fred Shelton told The Dispatch. Stallings also is charged with shooting into an occupied building.
Officers responded to a shots fired call at about 5 p.m. Wednesday at the McDonald’s parking lot on Alabama Street. When they arrived, the suspects had fled, but officers found shell casings on the ground.
Video surveillance police obtained from the adjacent Marvin’s Building Materials store shows two vehicles leaving the scene of the shooting — a white SUV with an Oktibbeha County license plate and a dark four-door sedan. It shows two Black men getting in and leaving in the black sedan.
On Friday, Shelton said, police spoke with the two occupants of the dark sedan and located the white SUV — which had bullet holes — in Starkville with assistance from the police department there. Armstead was later arrested.
Shelton said two occupants were in each vehicle at the time of the incident. Stallings and Armstead were dealing with the iPad transaction when the money for the sale was short. The two suspects started exchanging gunfire, and bullets from Stallings’ weapon hit the Marvin’s building. No one was injured.
The other occupants of the vehicles have not been charged, Shelton said.
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