White faces attempted murder charge: Innocent woman shot on her way to the mailbox
|
The suspect, Richard White, 59, and the boyfriend of his daughter, Tyrone Jackson, 26, have been charged with attempted first-degree murder.
The charges come after Mary McCoy, 66, was shot while walking toward the mailbox at her daughter’s home Saturday afternoon. She was airlifted to Vanderbilt Hospital where she is being treated for a wound to her side inflicted by a 9mm semi-automatic pistol alleged fired by Jackson.
According to DeKalb County Sheriff Lloyd Emmons, McCoy was apparently not the intended target and was an innocent bystander when Jackson and White came by to exact vengeance for an earlier episode. Emmons believes Jackson and a man named James Evans got into a physical altercation earlier in the day at a park on Smith Road in Smithville. Jackson reportedly returned with White and waited for Evans.
Jackson then reportedly opened fire on Evans’ car, firing six shots, one of which hit McCoy in a nearby yard. No one else was injured. A later search of White’s car netted shell casing like the ones which were fired in the attack. The reason for the original fight is unclear as is White’s participation in the shooting.
White, who lives in DeKalb County, was director of Caney Fork Development Corporation in the 1970s and 1980s. He oversaw the organization’s work in Warren, DeKalb, Cannon and Van Buren counties. Caney Fork Development Corporation was an anti-poverty program which oversaw the administration of government programs.
(Dennis Stanley of the Smithville Review contributed to this story.)