Police charged the owner of a funeral service company on Wednesday, a day after he reportedly shot two people at a burial in a Maryland cemetery that his company was helping to plan.
Police said that Ronald Steven, 30, was a pallbearer and was one of the people who died. Soon after the shooting at Washington National Cemetery on Tuesday, he died at the hospital. A scratch wound was done to a second person, an adult woman.
Wilson Chavis, who is 48 years old, was charged with first- and second-degree murder, attempted first- and second-degree murder, and other crimes by the Homicide Unit of the Prince George’s County Police Department.
CBS Baltimore said that the violence broke out at the funeral of Arianna Davis, who was shot while in a car with her family on Mother’s Day in Washington, D.C. After three days, Davis died. The FBI will pay up to $10,000 for information that helps catch and jail the person who shot the girl.
David Blazer, who is in charge of the Prince George’s County Major Crimes Division, said that the shooting that killed someone at the graveyard had nothing to do with the funeral.
“We think this was a fight that had nothing to do with the funeral, the events leading up to the funeral, or the investigation in D.C.,” Blazer said on Tuesday.
The police investigation showed that the suspect, who was the owner of the company that was taking care of Davis’s funeral and burial, approached two people right before the service started.
One of those people was a pallbearer at Davis’s funeral, officials said. People from different funeral service companies were the ones he talked to. The suspect has a “long-standing” business disagreement with that company.
“Several people at the funeral got mad at Chavis and talked to him about it,” cops said in a Facebook post. “According to what we know so far, Chavis pulled out a gun and fired two shots, hitting both people.”
The suspect then got in his car and drove away from the graveyard. He was caught during a traffic stop, where he was recognized. On Wednesday, he was in the care of the Department of Corrections.
In recent years, people have been shot at funeral houses and cemeteries. After a service in April, several people were shot outside a funeral home in northeastern Washington, D.C. In October of last year, there was a shooting outside of a Pittsburgh church where a funeral for a gun violence victim was taking place.
If you are interested in learning more about this subject, I suggest checking out the following links:
- Drunken Shooting ‘Game’ Ends in Painful Death of French Woman
- Historic Church Consumed by Flames in Aftermath of Lightning Strike
Six people were hurt. In July 2020, there was a shooting at a funeral home in Chicago that hurt 15 people.
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