Snapchat photo helped catch suspect
Chattanooga police used a Snapchat photo to tie an 18-year-old man to an August shooting in a Chuck E. Cheese parking lot, records show.
Police believe Malcom Watkins shot a 16-year-old boy in the foot during an attempted robbery on Aug.
11 at the Chuck
E. Cheese on Northgate Mall Drive in Hixson.
Three victims, all juveniles, told police they went to the parking lot to buy marijuana, but instead three men jumped out of a car and tried to rob the group, demanding all their possessions.
The victims said one of the suspects had a gun and that they fought back against the attackers. The 16-year-old boy was shot during the struggle, and then all three suspects fled. The Times Free Press does not typically identify juvenile victims of crime.
The juveniles didn’t know the name of the man with the gun but did give police a photo of the man from the popular messaging app Snapchat. Investigators were able to identify the man in the photo as Watkins, according to court records.
All three victims also picked Watkins out of a photo lineup, police said.
Watkins was arrested
Friday and charged with especially aggravated robbery, two counts of aggravated robbery and felonious reckless endangerment.
He is in custody at the Hamilton County Jail and will appear in Hamilton County General Sessions Court on Wednesday.
There have been about 104 shootings in Chattanooga so far this year, according to Times Free Press records. Twenty-seven people have been killed in the city during 2016. Of those, 23 victims were shot to death, two were strangled, one stabbed, and one killed in an intentionally set house fire.