After shooting in Little Rock, 911 call shows chaos, witness's desperation

In this Nov. 30 photo, police investigate a fatal shooting on Charles Bussey Avenue in Little Rock.
In this Nov. 30 photo, police investigate a fatal shooting on Charles Bussey Avenue in Little Rock.

Recordings of 911 calls immediately after a fatal shooting last month in Little Rock detail a man's impulse decision to leave one fatally injured man behind, and, against a medic's advice, drive another injured man to a hospital.

The Nov. 30 rapid-fire drive-by shooting at 2117 W. Charles Bussey Ave. left one man with bullet wounds in both legs and Leon Mitchell Jr., 37, on the ground mortally wounded.

At 9:10 p.m., just moments after the shooting, one of the five people at the house that night called 911.

In the background, several voices overlap as the caller tries to get them to quiet down so he can hear the dispatcher. One person cries "Leon" over and over. A second person begs for help.

"Help me up, help me up," a man says in the background, as the dispatcher asks what's going on.

"Leon, oh my," the caller says, heaving. "Leon might be ... oh my god."

The caller yells into the phone, "send the ambulance, send the police, send everybody!" Then he speaks to someone in the background: "I got you. I've got you."

The medic advises the man to stay where he is and assures him that an ambulance is on its way. But the caller insists that he has to get one of the injured men to a hospital. The medic tells the caller he has to stop the man's bleeding, that stopping the man from bleeding out is more important than driving him to the hospital.

"He's hit!" the caller says. "He has to go to the hospital right now, so I'm going to take him."

For a long few moments, the caller looks for his glasses -- which fell off during the shooting, he says in the recording. Then he gives up and decides to drive blindly to the hospital.

"I can't see, I can't see, bro," the man says. "I'm going to get you there."

A second voice then comes over the line after the caller apparently handed the phone to the injured man.

"Sir, I've been shot in both of my legs," 22-year-old Rodney Holloway tells the medic. "I can't walk. Please. Please."

While the original caller drives, the medic tells Holloway to use a cloth to press down on the wounds to try to stop the bleeding.

"What about the other person?" the medic asks.

"I don't know," the original caller says. "I have left. He was down."

When police arrived on West Charles Bussey Avenue fewer than 5 minutes after the initial 911 call, Mitchell was in the front yard bleeding heavily. He was dead by 9:21 p.m.

Holloway made it to UAMS Medical Center about 9:25 p.m., more than 10 minutes after police arrived at the West Charles Bussey Avenue house, dispatch records show. Holloway was treated for his wounds and has been released, police spokesman Lt. Michael Ford said last week.

Officers found multiple shell casings near the house and several bullet holes in the front paneling, according to a news release.

Two other people also called 911 that night, saying they'd heard between six and 10 rapid shots in the area of West Charles Bussey Avenue. The dispatcher tells one caller that officers are on their way.

The vehicle the drive-by gunmen were in was a red SUV, a news release said. No arrests have been made in Mitchell's death, which was Little Rock's 10th homicide in November.

Police have been called to the West Charles Bussey Avenue address at least five times in the past three years: twice for burglaries and three times for reports of aggravated assaults, according to police records.

One of those incidents, which happened exactly one year before Mitchell's death, was a drive-by in which a man was shot in the calf and at least 10 bullet holes were found in two vehicles outside the residence.

Metro on 12/16/2018

Upcoming Events