Gunfire in Little Rock
Family members react after arriving at the Terra Vista apartments after a man was shot on Sunday in Little Rock. Little Rock police have not released the name of the shooting victim.
A shooting in a southwest Little Rock apartment complex left one man dead Sunday afternoon, police said.
Little Rock police officers responded just after 1 p.m. Sunday to several calls reporting that there had been a shooting and more details about a victim lying in the parking lot followed, police spokesman Eric Barnes said.
Officers found the victim at the Terra Vista Apartments in the 4000 block of Terra Vista Circle, Barnes said.
The shooting occurred after “some kind of disturbance” in the parking lot behind a building in the northeast corner of the complex, Barnes said.
After the disturbance, the gunman shot the victim and left the scene. Officers found the victim in the parking lot and started CPR. When emergency medical responders arrived, they took over the life-saving measures but soon pronounced him dead.
Police hadn’t identified the shooter or the victim as of Sunday night.
Barnes described the shooter as a “heavyset black male,” and said police didn’t have a more detailed description. Detectives and officers were still processing the scene and talking to neighbors and family Sunday afternoon. The complex has security surveillance, which Barnes said officers would use in the investigation and to get a more detailed description of the shooter.
He added that police think the victim lived at the Terra Vista complex and that he and the shooter knew each other, although their relationship was unclear.
Barnes spoke near a playground in the middle of the complex that had bright red monkey bars and a plastic slide.
The crime scene was in easy view of the slide, and as officers processed the scene on Sunday, a woman walked past, crying loudly and clutching a blue dish towel to her mouth. She had her arm wrapped around a man who half-carried her to a larger group of the victim’s family members.
“My baby! Where is my baby?,” she shouted as they stumbled forward, closer to the crime-scene tape.
The group responded to her cries with sobs of their own, and when she reached them, another woman folded her in for a hug while others spoke to police or made tearful phone calls.
“We feel your pain and we want to bring you closure,” Barnes said when asked during a news briefing what he wanted the family to know.
The homicide is the city’s 26th of the year.