Charges have been filed against the man who admitted leaving a pistol within reach of a 2–year–old boy who remains in critical condition. Ron Allen is charged with second degree cruelty to a child and reckless conduct after the accidental shooting of Jayden Simmons. Allen turned himself in without incident.
The mother of the child, Melinda Simmons of West Broad Court apartments at MLK Boulevard and Henry Street, flagged down an officer on the way to Memorial University Medical Center to report she was taking her son to the hospital with the gunshot wound. Investigators found evidence supporting her explanation that the child found a gun on the floor of the bathroom and was playing with it when it fired. The mother said Allen, her boyfriend, had left the loaded pistol in the bathroom.
• Police have recovered five of the 14 cars stolen from Vaden Nissan Used Cars, and three men have been arrested for the thefts. Arrested were Antwan Jamelle Drayton, 28, his brother Brandon Maurice Williams, 17, and Kenneth Garrard Allen, 18.
Police were called to the dealership one morning for a burglary report and employees then discovered that many keys were missing from the key board and a total of14 vehicles were stolen. Two of the vehicles almost immediately were recovered parked at Brookside Apartments at 111 Edgewater Road.
A forensics officer saw a third stolen vehicle run the stop sign on Montgomery Cross Road, striking another vehicle. The three occupants started running. Police found Drayton and Williams on the back of Oglethorpe Mall.
Williams ran to Chippewa Drive near where four SCMPD canine teams were training with a team from Brunswick. Two canine teams chased him over a fence where he found another canine team waiting and surrendered.
Two other vehicles were recovered that afternoon in the 200 block of Travis Road and at the Red Lion Apartments on Waters Avenue. The latter vehicle was covered with a silver tarp and bearing one of five license plates reported stolen at the same time from Enterprise Auto Rental on White Bluff Road.
• Three separate shooting incidents happened a few hours apart within a few blocks of East Savannah.
Two men and a 17–year–old girl received non–life threatening wounds when someone opened fire on them at a Skidaway Road Laundromat. Desmond Sutton, 26, Garnell Quarterman, 19, and Javon Cholz were shot in their car as they left the Speed Queen Laundromat at Skidaway and Sunset Boulevard about 12:20 a.m. The two men ran north on Skidaway several doors to an Enmark station seeking help. Cholz, shot in her leg, crawled into the laundromat where police found her receiving aid from a bystander.
The investigation showed the three victims had driven to the laundromat where Quarterman had put clothes in a washing machine and returned to the car which was leaving when the gunfire began.
The other two incidents happened almost simultaneously earlier that day. Christopher Washington, 19, said he was walking on Sunset Boulevard when several males walked out of the park and one fired, striking him in the foot.
In the 1900 block of East 50th Street, Jerome Johnson, 29, was found on the porch of his residence with a gunshot wound.