After a shooting in Tuscaloosa injured one University of Alabama student and shook residents around town on Sunday, police investigators discovered that the shooter is “developmentally challenged” and that his caretaker bears a large portion of the blame.
Per ABC 33/40, the 28-year-old shooter fired several rounds into Another Broken Egg Cafe, a popular restaurant along the city’s Riverwalk, and hit one student in the arm, resulting in non-life threatening injuries.
Tuscaloosa Police Captain Kip Hart explained that the developmentally challenged man, while waiting inside a vehicle on his caretaker to return from making a reservation at the restaurant, discovered a pistol. The weapon belonged to the caretaker and driver of the vehicle, Javaris Deangelo Dubose.
According to Hart, Dubose left the fully loaded pistol alone within reach of the shooter in the vehicle. The man, Dubose’s client, accessed the gun and began firing from inside the car. When Dubose saw the bullet holes in the car, he fled the scene instead of calling the police.Dubose is in the county jail after being charged with Reckless Endangerment and Tampering with Physical Evidence. He is booked on a $12,000 bond and more charges could be filed. The shooter was taken to a facility for monitoring and evaluation.
The area of Tuscaloosa where the shooting took place is full of high-end shops, restaurants and every-day-use condominiums.
Local custodian Jerome Brown told ABC 33/40 that, “(It’s) normally peaceful. You never really hear a tale of anything crazy going on.”
However, according to Brown, things have now changed.
“To hear a tale of a shooting, going on in a place like this – you never would imagine something like that to happen. It’s sorta strange and it sorta make you want to stay on your toes [sic],” Brown concluded.
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Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn