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Three suspects taken into custody will be charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon with attempt to inflict serious injury, according to Capt. Jon Barnwell of Campus Police.
One of the suspects is a student and the other two are unaffiliated with the University — Ryan Alexander Barnes, a sophomore in First Year College; Leroy Barnes Jr., 19; and Terrell Maurice Grimes, 16.
Campus Police also arrested Whitney Shanice Blakeney, a sophomore in business management, and charged her with “maintaining a dwelling for manufacture, sale and distribution of a controlled substance — marijuana.”
Two people were detained for questioning early Monday and were arrested on 2nd degree trespassing charges, Barnwell said, and a third person was taken into custody Monday afternoon.
“Each of the three suspects will receive two counts of assualt with a deadly weapon for each of the victims and one count of attempted murder for the male victim,” Barnwell said.
The two people who were detained for questioning immediately following the incident were people in the area that had some prior “history,” so police wanted to clarify that they didn’t have anything to do with the shooting, Barnwell said.
Barnwell said the driver of a White Ford Escort was one of the suspects being invesitgated.
“The vehicle was going the wrong way on Faucette Drive … just post-the incident. We were able to interact with it,” he said. “We let it go at that time, but further investigation leads us to believe that it could possibly be involved, so we relocated it and gave it back to Campus Police.”
Technician was first to report on the shooting, which left two people injured who were later transported to Wake Medical Hospital.
A male, 22, and female, 17, both unaffiliated with the University, were sitting in the gazebo outside Wolf Village when they were approached around midnight Monday, and multiple shots were fired at them, according to Barnwell.
The male was shot in the abdomen and the female in the foot, and according to Barnwell, both are going to recover. The female was released from the hospital this morning and the male has undergone successful surgery, according to Barnwell.
“At 12:05 [a.m.], the Raleigh Police Department received a call about someone possibly getting shot. They switched the call over to [Campus Police],” Barnwell said. “At 12:06, we were dispatched to the gazebo.”
Campus Police arrived on the scene at 12:08 a.m. after receiving a call from the blue light on Sullivan Drive.
“When the male subject fled the scene, he fled to Sullivan Drive and called us from the blue light there at Motor Pool,” Barnwell said. “The female that was shot in the foot ran around the building to the G building of Wolf Village and went in the lot.”
The reason the response time frame was a little sporadic was that officers went directly to the scene based on the information that Raleigh police provided Campus Police, but the victims had already fled the scene to two different areas, “so we had to get units there to address their medical conditions,” he said.
Sharde McNeil, an alumna, said she was inside Wolf Village when she heard gun shots.
“I didn’t turn around and look … [and my friends] didn’t believe me … because we’re in Wolf Village,” she said. “And then five minutes later, I heard police.”
Jessica Fulks, a senior in textile and apparel management, was with McNeil when she heard the shots.
“We were standing out where [the shooting] happened 30 minutes before,” Fulks said.
Although shootings are not common, Barnwell said, they are an occurrence on campus.
“They do happen on occasion in the urban environment that we’re in, in downtown Raleigh,” he said. “Sometimes situations that occur in Raleigh do bleed on over to the campus.”
Barnwell said this situation may cause concern for some, but Campus Police is working on the case.
“It’s going to raise concerns and it’s going to heighten a little bit of anxiety, but that’s why we’re here. We’re here to get things up, back operational, back to normal, and hopefully reinstill that sense of safety within the campus community,” he said. “We’re going to of course heighten our patrolling of the area.”
