New information revealed that a shooting in Annapolis, Maryland, that left three dead on Sunday took place following an argument over parking.
The suspected shooter, 43-year-old Charles Robert Smith, confronted the victims outside his Annapolis home after they approached his mother, Shirley Smith, to speak about the parking issue after she had called a local parking enforcement employee to complain that a vehicle was blocking their driveway, charging documents said.
"We know that those things did occur," Annapolis Police Chief Edward Jackson said when asked about the parking dispute, but he declined to elaborate on a motive for the shooting.
Smith got involved after an argument broke out between his mother and one of the victims, 27-year-old Mario Antonio Mireles Ruiz, the documents state. The encounter turned physical, and Smith allegedly pulled out a gun and shot both Mireles Ruiz and 25-year-old Christian Marlon Segovia.
Others at the party saw Mireles Ruiz on the ground and ran over to Smith’s house, the documents said. Smith then allegedly went inside and began shooting with a long gun out the front window, killing Nicholas Mireles, Mario Mireles Ruiz’s father, and wounding the three other victims, the documents said.
Smith surrendered to police without incident following the shooting. He allegedly claimed he opened fire because a gunshot was fired at his house, though witnesses told authorities that they saw none of the victims with guns. Investigators recovered both a semi-automatic handgun and a long gun at the scene.
Police had responded around 7:30 p.m. to a call for help on Paddington Place and found six people suffering from gunshots.
Jackson identified the victims who died as Mireles Ruiz, of Annapolis; Segovia, of Annapolis; and Mireles Ruiz's father Nicholas Mireles, 55, of Odenton, Maryland. The three wounded were in stable condition Monday and expected to survive.
Smith was being held without bond on three counts of second-degree murder, three counts of attempted murder, assault and other offenses.
ENGLISH POLICE ARREST MAN WHO ALLEGEDLY KILLED 3, INJURED 3 OTHERS WITH HIS VAN
Cops were not ruling out the possibility of investigating the shooting as a hate crime, Jackson said, but it was not necessarily their focus.
"Ostensibly, our suspect is a White male and the three victims are Latino," the police chief said. "But we can’t draw any inferences from that. We have to look at every possible angle."
The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are helping with the investigation, Jackson said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
