By JIM HOOK
@JHookPO
SHIPPENSBURG >> A man fired a handgun three times around 3 a.m. on April 13 after he was denied admittance to a private party at College Park Apartments.
Dejuan Thompson, a Shippensburg University student who was shot in the arm, told police he did not know the person shot him, according to court documents. Thompson, 23, of Philadelphia was hospitalized in Penn State Hershey Medical Center.
Court documents detail the police investigation into the shooting that led to the arrest of Malcolm Apranise Staten, 20, of Chambersburg.
Staten has been charged with aggravated assault, discharging a firearm in an occupied structure, two counts of simple assault and two counts of recklessly endangering another person. He was arrested Thursday and is being held in Cumberland County Jail after failing to post $100,000 bond.
An estimated 400 people, including Thompson, were attending a party at the time of the shooting.
Thompson originally told police that he had been shot inside the apartment, that there had been no fighting or arguing and that he did not know anybody who was standing around him when he was shot, according to court documents. “Dejuan thought he could take this into his own hands.” Thompson later acknowledged he had been shot outside the apartment.
The chief investigator found a blood smear in the stairwell leading from the front door to the living room, according to court documents.
Archilles Roberts, a witness to the shooting, told police on April 13 that a group of guys from Chambersburg were trying to get into the party. The guys had a reputation for fighting, so they were kept out. They were going to fight a group from the party. The Chambersburg group, amounting to five or fewer guys, walked away, then returned. Guys from the party, including Thompson, confronted them outside.
One of the guys from Chambersburg pulled out a small silver gun, Roberts told police. Partygoers asked, “What are you going to do with that? Shoot us?” The guy cocked the gun and pointed its sideways at the partygoers, who opened the door to the apartment and tried to run inside.
Roberts said he heard three shots and the guys from Chambersburg yelling, “Malcolm. Malcom, let’s go. The cops are coming.”
Roberts described the gunman to criminal investigator Trooper Jeremy Matas, a 21-year veteran with Pennsylvania State Police and currently assigned to the Carlisle station. Matas gave Roberts’ description to Chambersburg Police Sgt. John Clawson Jr. who thought Staten fit the description.
Roberts on the morning of April 14 identified Staten as the shooter from a photo lineup , according to court documents. He was told that the lineup might or might not have a photograph of the shooter.
On the afternoon of April 14, Roberts also showed Matas where the gunman and other people were standing during the shooting, according to court documents. Matas found a bullet hole in the door of the ground floor apartment where the party had been held and another in the door of a neighboring apartment. The resident of the neighboring apartment told Matas he didn’t know a bullet had been shot through the door. When Matas looked for shell casings outside, the neighbor came outside and gave the trooper a .22-caliber brass shell that his friend had found earlier.
Matas interviewed Thompson on the evening of April 14, 37 hours his initial interview with him and again at Penn State Hershey Medical Center, according to court documents. Matas confronted Thompson about not telling the truth initially. Thompson told Matas he was shot outside and that the shooter was dressed in black and wearing a silver belt and a “ghost face bandana.” Thompson said he thought “something was going to go down for a guy to run up on 15 to 20 people.” Thompson could not pick out the gunman from a photo lineup containing Staten’s photo.
“I talked to Dejuan about retaliation, and he said he probably won’t,” Matas wrote in the court documents. “What he said last night was out of adrenaline, and he was extremely mad.”
Jim Hook can be reached at 717-262-4759.