A woman’s boyfriend tried and failed to shoot her ex-husband at Westbury Park Apartments with a 12-gauge shotgun at about 12:48 a.m. Sunday, according to a police incident report.
The ex-husband took away the weapon, threw it in a parking lot and bloodied the boyfriend’s face, according to the report.
Conway police responded to the sound of a gunshot at 831 Nutter Chapel Road in the wee hours Sunday. University of Central Arkansas police assisted. Several police units from both agencies responded.
The man, 23-year-old Andrew D. Porter, had blood on his face and shirt, was lying on the road and smelled of alcohol, a Conway police officer wrote. The officer asked two other people to sit down and not move.
“When we arrived there was a female screaming on the west side of the road, sitting in the grass between the sidewalk and the road,” one UCA officer wrote. “There was also a white male sitting Indian style, smoking a cigarette, as well as another white male who appeared to be bleeding from the face.”
Another UCA officer noted Porter was bleeding “profusely” from the head. The woman, Kimberly Murphy, 26, was screaming that she was hurt.
According to the Conway report, Eric Watts, 31, who was uninjured, told police his ex-wife’s mother called and told him to pick up his children because Porter and Murphy were “messed up.” As Watts walked up to the apartment, Porter game out with a semi-automatic shotgun.
Two witnesses told police they saw Porter shoot the gun at Watts and then Watts strike Porter. Watts said he didn’t want Porter to shoot again, so he “disarmed” him and “struck him in the face,” the UCA report said.
“(Watts) stated that he was on the east side of Nutter Chapel and Mr. Porter was standing on the roadside on the west of Nutter Chapel when he was shot at,” according to the Conway report. “(Watts) then ran toward (Porter) and struck him and he fell to the ground. He stated that he hit him several other times to get the gun away and keep him from getting up.”
Watts told police where the gun was laying. Police found it in the Westbury Park Apartments parking lot.
As police were responding to the shotgun report, they were notified of a vehicle trying to leave the scene of the crime and stopped the vehicle, according to incident reports. UCA police helped with the felony traffic stop at Dave Ward Drive and Moix Boulevard and two witnesses were transported to the police station to be interviewed, according to the Conway police incident report.
Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services and the Conway Fire Department treated Murphy and Porter, who likely suffered a broken nose but refused treatment. Murphy had suffered head trauma and was transported to a hospital in Little Rock, according to the Conway report.
Fire Chief Bart Castleberry, who is out of town, said the department could not release information for privacy reasons.
Police officers located wadding from the spent shell in the Banister Lieblong Clinic parking lot “about 20 feet northeast of a large tree, just east of where the shotgun was supposedly fired,” according to the UCA report.
Porter was transported to the Faulkner County Detention Center and charged with aggravated assault.
(Staff writer Scarlet Sims can be reached by email at scarlet.sims@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1246. To comment on this and other stories in the Log Cabin, log on to www.thecabin.net. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)