Couple were fighting before Friday shooting at Hixson Pike gas station
A dead man’s cellphone showed he had argued with the woman accused of shooting him at a Hixson Pike gas station parking lot early Friday morning.
Officer Zachary Franks found Eric Charles Burchfield lying dead, shot in the back, next to his vehicle at the Kangaro Express in the 4800 block of Hixson Pike around 3:25 a.m. Investigators found a spent .380 caliber shell nearby.
Burchfield’s mother, Sheba Coppit, told investigators her 28-year-old son had been arguing Thursday evening with Emily LeAnne Brooks Johnson, 26, who goes by the name Ember Lee Cash Elm.
Coppit named Johnson as the killer when police notified her of her son’s death, according to the police affidavit.
“Ember killed him,” she said.
Her description of Johnson “closely resembled” those given by witnesses at the crime scene, police said.
When police checked Burchfield’s cellphone, they said it “displayed messages consistent with two parties at odds,” according to the police affidavit.
Officers arrested Johnson at her Tall Pine Lane residence, but at some point Johnson slipped her handcuffs and made a short-lived break for it. She ran, but officers quickly caught her.
She grabbed a backpack during her brief escape, but a police officer kicked it away when she tried to get something inside its front pouch.
The officer found a .380 automatic pistol inside.
Johnson has been charged with criminal homicide and unlawful possession of a weapon. Bond was set at $1 million for the homicide charge and $5,000 for the weapon offense. She is scheduled to appear in General Sessions Court at 8:30 a.m. on July 26.
The same woman, under the name Emily LeAnne Brooks, has several arrests on her record. She was charged with aggravated domestic assault in July 2016. In 2014, she was charged for several offenses, including theft, possession of a controlled substance, criminal impersonation and evading arrest.