Two ignored warning, walked in on burglar

Details emerge on 2 fatal shootings in LR

photo

PCSO

Charles Edward Murry Jr.

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http://www.arkansas…"> See Murry's previous charges

— Two men who were shot — one fatally — late Tuesday morning were trying to stop a burglary at a Capitol View house in Little Rock and had been warned minutes earlier by the homeowner not to put themselves in danger.

Gyorgy Posan, 28, died after he was shot four times. He and his friend Gabar Felszeghy, 25, had walked in on the burglar at 204 S. Thayer St., a home Posan shared with his domestic partner, Reggie Marshall. Felszeghy was in critical but stable condition at a Little Rock hospital Wednesday.

“I said, ‘Don’t go inside the house. If [the burglar] runs out, just keep up with where he’s at,” Marshall said. “Of course, he [Posan] has a key and went inside and was gunned down in the stairwell.”

Police said Charles Murry Jr., 19, shot Posan and Felszeghy, then fled and was fatally shot just a few houses down the block by a Little Rock police officer, identified Wednesday as Terry McDaniel.

McDaniel’s hand was injured during Tuesday’s con- frontation, and he remained on paid administrative leave Wednesday, according to Little Rock Police Department spokesman Sgt. Cassandra Davis.

Marshall’s grief Wednesday was mixed with rage.

“He has ruined my life,” Marshall said of Murry. “For 50 years I was miserable, then I had three years of happiness. ... I can’t ever get that back.”

Marshall said he was at his business near Rebsamen Park on Tuesday when he received a call from a neighbor who had seen a “young black male,” later identified as Murry, scaling the fence at Marshall’s house.

According to Marshall, neighbors watched as Murry kicked in the back door. They alerted Marshall to the breakin, and Marshall called police to report the burglary.

He said he then called Posan, a mixed-martial-arts fighter, who had left the home only 10 minutes earlier.

After the shooting, Murry fled south along South Thayer Street, Davis said.

McDaniel, 24, an officer in the downtown patrol division since he joined the department in 2009, was driving north on Thayer Street when he spotted the fleeing Murry, she said.

Davis said Murry was carrying a handgun, and when McDaniel yelled at him to stop, Murry pointed the “small revolver” at the officer.

McDaniel drew his .40-caliber Glock and opened fire, Davis said.

Murry continued to run, cutting between two houses in the 300 block of South Thayer Street. McDaniel ran after him, and when Murry again pointed his gun at the officer, McDaniel opened fire, striking Murry several times, Davis said.

Other police officers who had joined the chase put pressure on Murry’s wounds and performed CPR until emergency crews arrived. Murry was taken to UAMS Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead shortly after he arrived.

On April 8, Murry was arrested in a February residential burglary where $1,500 in electronics, including an Apple iPad and several Nintendo video-game systems, were stolen.

The items were later pawned at a Game XChange store in Little Rock. Murry admitted to police that he had broken into the residence at 431 Midland St. and taken the items, and he pleaded guilty on April 30 to felony burglary and theft of property.

After spending nearly two months in the Pulaski County jail, Murry was sentenced to three years of probation and was released from the lockup.

“What judge released that criminal who killed my friend?” Marshall asked Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Murry’s mother, Jackie Mitchell, said news account about her oldest son were hard to believe.

She said she knew that her son wasn’t perfect. She knew about his past arrest and about the people he had fallen in with over the past two years as he alternated living with his grandmother in Little Rock and the Mitchells in Slidell, La.

“As a young black man coming up in this environment, it has a lot of influence ... poor choices,” Mitchell said. “There were people he wanted to prove something to, to get in with, just fit in. To be a young man, you feel you have to fit in a certain way.”

On Tuesday, Mitchell — who turned 37 that day — was in Little Rock to attend graduation ceremonies for several family members. She was on her way to one of the ceremonies when she saw police officers pull up outside her mother’s West 12th Street home, where Murry had been living.

She said Wednesday that she didn’t understand how, after 19 years of trying to teach him to do the right thing, something like this could happen.

“I wouldn’t go a day without speaking with him,” Mitchell said. “But he was at that age, 18, 19. They know everything, and we don’t know anything. ... He was raised right, but in the end he went off and did his own thing.”

Posan’s and Murry’s deaths are the 17th and 18th homicides in Little Rock this year.

Murry’s slaying is the first involving a Little Rock officer since Jan. 17, when Special Weapons and Tactics team officers shot and killed Angelo Clark, 31, in his home at 1322 S. Tyler St. during a drug raid.

Davis said Murry’s shooting has prompted criminal and internal police investigations, which are ongoing.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/24/2012

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