Friday shooting suspect found barricaded in home
16-year-old taken into custody, charged with attempted murder
For the second time in a week, a typically quiet street in East Lake was flooded with police cars late Friday night.
Investigating the Friday shooting on the 3800 block of Alton Park Boulevard that left Daniel Green, 31, with multiple gunshot wounds, authorities located the suspected shooter at a home on the 3500 block of Clio Avenue.
The 16-year-old boy barricaded himself in the home and initially refused to come out, but surrendered as a SWAT team and hostage negotiators arrived, according to a Chattanooga police news release.
He has been charged with attempted murder, among other charges. Investigators believe the teen and the victim had an ongoing dispute, and the shooting likely is gang-related.
“We believe this teenager is responsible for the cold and calculated attempted murder of David Green Friday afternoon,” Edwin McPherson, Chattanooga police chief of investigations, said in the release.
“Major Crimes Investigators were able to develop credible leads throughout the day. This information led CPD’s Fugitive and Street Crimes Units to the suspect’s location late Friday night,” he said.
“We are relieved a suspect was taken into custody without incident and is charged in this shooting.”
For Ruth Espy and other residents on Clio Avenue, it’s been an eventful week in the neighborhood.
Early Thursday morning she answered the door to a man covered in blood who said he and his friend had been shot.
The man, Cody Nunley, 20, had been banging on the front door, leaving red handprints and splatters on her door. She called 911 and he survived the minor injuries he sustained.
However, the 16-year-old girl who had been with him was dead when authorities arrived. Espy said the girl could be seen from her porch, slumped over the steering wheel of a car parked next door.
Espy said she came home Friday to a small army of officers on her block again and couldn’t get to her house while the suspected shooter remained barricaded in a neighboring home.
“After I got back I thought, ‘Well, what else is going to happen,’” she said. “I’m kind of leery around there now.”
She said dozens of police officers had locked the street down, some angled in front of the house while they tried to coax the teen outside. She overheard a negotiator speaking over a PA system to him.
“He said, ‘You need to come out now and get this settled,’” she said.
Espy was allowed back in her home around 2 a.m., but she’s hoping to get a breather after the last few brushes with violent crime.
“I told my family, ‘When this is over I’m going out for the weekend and coming back Sunday,’” she said.
Another neighbor, Barbara Collins, said she was alerted when her family’s dogs started barking and she looked outside around 9 p.m.
“It was like every cop from Fox sector was out here,” she said, referring to the name of a Chattanooga police patrol district. “We couldn’t go anywhere.”
Collins also heard an officer speaking over the PA system, repeatedly trying to get the boy to turn himself over to police peacefully.
“He said, “Your family’s out here, we just want to help you. You’re not in trouble,’” she said.
She believes the home is owned by the boy’s mother, whom she saw standing with other family members near the road in front of the house.
“They didn’t want to bust the door down and go into his mom’s house,” she said.
But even after two serious police calls to her block in a matter of days, Collins said she and her kids aren’t going anywhere. She grew up in East Lake and the neighborhood isn’t worse than any other options in the city.
“It’s gonna happen anywhere,” she said.
Chattanooga saw a string of shootings last week that injured several people and killed two. The death of the 16-year-old girl on Thursday marked the seventh homicide of the year.
Contact staff writer Emmett Gienapp at egienapp@ timesfreepress.com or 423-7576731. Follow him on Twitter @emmettgienapp.