A 26-year-old shooting victim treated at a Little Rock hospital Saturday afternoon said that he had been shot outside Park Plaza, but a review of footage taken from the mall's security cameras so far found no evidence to support the statement, police said.
Officers who responded to the report of the shooting, which the victim said occurred in the east parking lot of the mall at 6000 W. Markham St., also couldn't locate a crime scene, according to police.
The victim, identified as Ralph Johnson of 6307 Denham Drive, was shot once in the left leg, an injury that police said wasn't life-threatening.
Johnson told officers he was in the vicinity of West Markham Street and John Barrow Road with a woman he didn't identify and with whom he was breaking off a relationship when they became involved in a verbal altercation. At that point, he said he walked to a nearby restaurant and got a ride from someone who dropped him off at the mall.
While walking at the mall, he heard someone shout his name, and as he turned, he heard a gunshot but didn't see anyone. Several people checked on him, and then someone he didn't know drove him to the hospital, he told police.
Johnson declined to make a recorded statement about the shooting.
The first call about the shooting came in at 1:57 p.m., and Johnson called at 2:05 p.m., a police spokesman, Lt. Sidney Allen, said in an email.
The mall on Saturday afternoon was crowded with post-Christmas shoppers. People who worked at the mall reported on social media they neither heard nor saw any evidence of the shooting.
Sean Phillips, the mall's regional marketing director, said in a statement Saturday evening, "We have no report or record of any incident happening at the mall."
Metro on 12/28/2014