Mount Olive police investigating second murder
By Steve Herring
Published in News on December 14, 2008 2:00 AM
MOUNT OLIVE -- Police were called to a busy North Breazeale Avenue shopping area Friday morning after a Latino male was shot and left beside the road.
It was the town's second fatal shooting in three days.
Chief of Police Ralph Schroeder said the two shootings are not connected and that he did not recall that the town had ever had two fatal shootings in such a short period of time.
Police were called to North Breazeale Avenue near the Roses parking in what was originally thought to have been a person struck by a car or who had fallen out of a car.
When they arrived, police found the body of the shooting victim in the outside southbound lane of the highway near the entrance to the parking lot.
Schroeder said the victim has been tentatively identified. However, he said it would be Monday morning before more information in the case and the name are released pending fingerprint verification. Also, next of kin have yet to be notified, he said.
Two town workers had been in the area when the call came in and were directing traffic when police arrived at 10:57 a.m. Wayne County EMS also responded to the scene.
According to witnesses, the man, approximately 40, was seen falling out of the front passenger door of a white SUV, possibly a GMC Yukon.
"It appears that he may have been shot while trying to get out of the vehicle," Schroeder said.
The white SUV speeded off southbound on Breazeale Avenue.
The victim was transported to Wayne Memorial Hospital where he later died of what appeared to be gunshot wounds.
An autopsy performed Sat-urday in Chapel Hill confirmed the cause of death as a gunshot wound, Schroeder said.
The SBI has been called in to participate in the investigation.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Mount Olive Police Department at 658-5031, Ext. 104, or Goldsboro/Wayne Crime Stoppers at 735-2255.
Meanwhile, the investigation is continuing into the first fatal shooting Tuesday night in a residential area at 126 Lee's Country Club Road just off of U.S. 117 Alt. south near the railroad tracks, where police found Javonnie Langston, 33, of North Carolina Street in Goldsboro dead at the scene.
Michael Lee Shipman, 26, of South Breazeale Avenue, Mount Olive, is in the Wayne County Jail, and is being held without bond on a charge of first-degree murder, according to detention center records.
The shooting grew out of an argument between the two men, Schroeder said.
He said no additional information was available on the Tuesday murder. Schroeder said investigators are still taking statements in the first shooting.