Little Rock's 1st killing of '17 probed as gang-related

Makes it harder to solve, police say

Police block the intersection of West 34th Street and Martin Luther King Drive on Jan. 8 as they investigate a fatal shooting, Little Rock’s first homicide of the year.
Police block the intersection of West 34th Street and Martin Luther King Drive on Jan. 8 as they investigate a fatal shooting, Little Rock’s first homicide of the year.

Little Rock detectives are investigating the city's first slaying of the year as a gang-related homicide, a Police Department spokesman said Monday.

Mashon Jackson, 20, of Little Rock was fatally shot Jan. 8 when gunfire struck the vehicle he was driving, according to a report.

Lt. Steve McClanahan, spokesman for the department, identified Jackson as a gang member Monday.

McClanahan declined to identify the gang Jackson was affiliated with. Before his death, Jackson had been arrested numerous times by Little Rock officers and had been found guilty of a series of crimes, including robbery, theft of property, breaking or entering and theft by receiving, according to online court records.

[2017 HOMICIDES: Details on killings reported so far in Little Rock, North Little Rock]

Often, when gang members or habitual offenders are witnesses to crimes, they refuse to cooperate with police and can make an investigation more difficult, McClanahan said.

"The likelihood of them participating is reduced significantly," he said.

Authorities found Jackson shot in the upper body on West 34th Street, just west of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, on Jan. 8 after police in the area heard the shots and responded to the scene, according to a statement from the department.

There is an ongoing investigation into the homicide, McClanahan said.

Police said Jackson's passenger, Jerico Mosley, 18, had shot a firearm toward another moving vehicle at the time. He later went to the department's 12th Street Substation and was charged with two counts of unlawful discharge of a firearm from a moving vehicle, according to a report.

Police said at the time that dozens of rounds were fired and authorities recovered several different types of weapons from the scene.

In gang-related homicides, McClanahan said, people sometimes choose to respond to the death with violence instead of cooperating with police -- "which we don't want, because it creates that cycle of violence."

Gang activity in Little Rock has changed since the 1990s, when Little Rock gang violence attracted national attention, he said.

Back then, McClanahan said, gangs were more segregated and protective of their boundaries, marking certain streets as off-limits for members of other gangs.

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Now, gangs in Little Rock are more spread out and are not as territorial, he said.

In this case, in which multiple people were shooting, it can make prosecuting the slaying that much more difficult, McClanahan said.

"It does pose problems for prosecution -- How you are going to charge people? Who's going to cooperate?" McClanahan said.

Less than a week after the Jan. 8 homicide, police were called to a residence on the 8200 block of Keats Drive for a report that somebody had fired shots in the area, according to a report.

The 36-year-old homeowner told police that she was in the home with five children, aged 7 to 18 years old, when she heard the shots, police said.

The woman told police that she believed the shots fired were connected to the killing of Jackson, who was her cousin.

The woman's son had received messages on Facebook from a 17-year-old teen since the killing, she told police Jan. 14, and that he had threatened to shoot up the residence in the messages, according to the report.

Officers found several shell casings in front of the home.

The youth was arrested last month and faces several charges, according to online court records.

The homeowner declined to comment on the case Monday.

Metro on 02/07/2017

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