Teen arrested in connection to Monday’s shooting death
Police have arrested Jordan D’Kobe, 19, on a charge of criminal homicide in connection with a Monday shooting believed to be a botched drug deal turned deadly.
Police responded to a gas station on the 100 block of Glenwood Drive around 2:45 p.m. on a report of a shooting and found Dangelo Marshall, 20, lying on the ground with a gunshot wound to the head, according to court records.
The store owner allowed police to view his video system and an investigator wrote that it showed a Nissan Sentra and a Chevrolet Malibu pull up at adjacent pumps.
He said the driver of the Nissan then got out his car and into the back of the Malibu. After about 15 seconds, gunfire erupted in the car.
The driver of the Nissan exited the Chevy and fled west on McCallie Avenue. The driver of the Chevy opened his door and immediately fell to the ground while his passenger got out, hopped in the driver’s seat and drove off.
After emergency responders arrived, Marshall was transported to a local hospital by EMS, but he died from his injuries. Meanwhile, two other shooting victims, D’Kobe and Michael Benning, 18, arrived at two separate hospitals via personal cars.
Both sustained minor injuries: Jordan was shot in the right arm and Benning was shot in the left.
Jordan was discharged from the hospital and interviewed by investigators at the Police Services Center. He admitted to going to Kanku’s to meet someone to buy marijuana.
Jordan said he paid the driver $100, but then the passenger pulled out a gun, prompting him to pull one out himself and start shooting into the front of the car.
Two hours after the incident, blood and discarded clothes could still be seen at the foot of a gas pump.
Jordan is a validated gang member, but the victims are not. Police said Tuesday that this shooting is not believed to be gang-motivated.
Marshall’s homicide is the 16th in Chattanooga this year. There were 17 at this point in 2016.
The shooting comes just a week after the bodies of two males, Thomas Holder, 20, and Rayshann Underwood, 17, were found in Highland Memorial Gardens. Both had been shot to death and police are still actively investigating their deaths as a gang-motivated double homicide.
Tiffany Williams said she taught Marshall for two years at Tyner — first during his eighthgrade year and then again in 10th grade. She said he kept to himself and stayed out of trouble, but was uncommonly mature and thoughtful for his age.
“He didn’t have a group. He was just kind of his own man as a 13-year-old,” she said. “He had a quiet demeanor about him, but the kids all respected him. Probably because he didn’t bother anybody. The girls, of course, loved him.”
She remembered one class in his eighth-grade year in which Marshall used an app on his phone to secretly turn her projector off and on. He showed her the app after class, unprompted.
Williams has taught students who were or eventually became affiliated with gang activity and she’s lost students to gun violence before, but Marshall’s death came as a shock.
“This one was different because we’d had a relationship. He would come back and check in on me and see how I was doing. We had built a relationship,” she said. “He wasn’t, to my knowledge, involved in anything like [gang activity]. He was just a leader in his own right. He was just Dee.”
“The amazing thing is, I believe he even graduated a semester early. He was just that smart, but nobody knew it because he was so quiet and unassuming. When he would talk, everybody would listen.”
Williams posted about the incident on Facebook and friends and family commented with messages of grief and prayer.
“His smile could melt ice. He would sit in my office and talk about his parents, girls, working, and his car,” wrote Kim Womble. “I don’t umderstand [sic] how we have gone from the hardest school year to the worst summer. My prayers are with his parents and his family.