Little Rock Shoot Out

Bullets fly across rush-hour traffic; 1 dead, 1 injured
No arrests yet in Asher shootout
By Jacob Quinn Sanders

LITTLE ROCK — A wild rush-hour shooting Thursday that sent bullets flying across Little Rock’s Asher Avenue and cars swerving to avoid the chaos left one man dead and another shot in the gut, police and witnesses said.

According to their accounts, a group of men drove up and parked about 5 p.m. in the small lot next to the Pro-Cut & Styles barbershop on Asher just east of Fair Park Boulevard. The men - three or four, witnesses said - walked toward another group, hanging out in the parking lot of the XXPress Auto garage just south across Asher.

Before they even hit the sidewalk, witnesses said, they opened fire.

“I’m not kidding you, it sounded like someone was playing the drums, there was so much shooting,” said Kevin Hamilton, 52, a contractor from North Little Rock. “I don’t even think I saw people being shot at.I just saw people shooting.”

He said he and a friend and the friend’s daughter leapt across an alley and huddled next to the western wall of Hub Cap Annie’s.

Shots flew back across Asher, and then more shooting came from a man police identified as the owner of XXPress. The man, whose name police did not release, fired as he chased men from the first group across the street toward the barbershop.

“I saw two of them coming toward me, right toward me, and at that moment I didn’t think to move,” Hamilton said. “If they wanted to shoot me, they could have shot me easy, we were that close. But they just ran on by and jumped a fence and took their guns with them.”

The XXPress owner jumped in front of their car, witnesses said, which police described as a maroon Chevrolet Caprice.

“He was yelling at the driver, ‘Halt! Halt! Don’t you go any-where,’” Hamilton said. “But that driver took off, and the dude shot at the car as it headed off.”

In the firefight, one man got hit in the chest, witnesses said, and others loaded him in a car and drove to St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said. Another man, who police said took a bullet to the torso just below the ribs, staggered to the Gene Rush Garage a block away, where someone called 911.

Police declined late Thursday to release the name of either victim, even though relatives had been notified. Detectives said they had a suspect in mind but would not identify him publicly.
The owner of XXPress was taken to the Little Rock Police Department’s detective division for interviews.

“Right now, we’re not sure why he might have been involved, other than he might have thought he was helping somebody,” police spokesman Lt. Terry Hastings said at 6 p.m., standing in a parking lot on Asher.

The capital city’s 34th homicide of 2007 closed Asher totraffic for more than two hours after the shootout. Crime-scene tape expanded across Asher and business parking lots like yellow plastic spiderwebs as more detectives examined the scene. Spectators congregated in small groups behind the yellow lines, but seemed mostly curious, talking on cellphones and asking each other or passing officerswhat happened.

Crime-scene specialists left orange cones marking possible evidence in clusters - four here, three there, 18 in all, most marking shell casings. One bullet pierced a metal garage door at XXPress, and another passed sideways through the taillight of a Cadillac parked at the barbershop across the street.

For all the bullets fired, few seemed to have hit anything other than the two men.

“This is just a mess,” Hamilton said. “I’m mad. Mad that this could happen in the middle of a busy street. Mad that somebody’s failed at giving these people some sense. Why did I have to see something like this happen ?”

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This article was published Friday, September 28, 2007.
Arkansas, Pages 13, 22 on 09/28/2007