A shooting near Foley and an armed abduction in Gulf Shores triggered a cross-state law enforcement pursuit that ended when officers used tire-deflation devices to stop a stolen minivan on a Mississippi highway, according to Baldwin County authorities.
The chain of events began Sunday when Baldwin County Sheriff’s deputies were notified that a man had been shot and was receiving treatment at a local hospital. Investigators determined the shooting occurred at Kelly’s Clay Pit near Grantham Road in the Foley area, a sprawling off-road property south of town where four-wheelers, mud trucks and trail riders gather on weekends.
Authorities say a suspect, later identified as Charles Andrew Goss-Richards, fired multiple shots at the victim and a second person who was with him, striking the victim once in the stomach. After the shooting, Goss-Richards and a female companion, identified as Elizabeth Janae Andrews, allegedly stole the victim’s vehicle and fled the scene.
Kelly’s Clay Pit draws riders from across south Baldwin County and the Pensacola area on weekends, and its remote acreage means response times test any emergency plan. Deputies and medics work the property’s entrances off Grantham Road, and serious incidents there quickly involve multiple agencies. Witnesses at the property provided the first descriptions of the shooter and the flight from the scene, according to authorities, and the account deputies assembled from those statements matched what investigators in Gulf Shores were already piecing together from the morning’s abduction report.
The shooting was not the only crime the pair is accused of that day. Authorities say the two are suspected of abducting a woman at gunpoint in Gulf Shores earlier the same day and stealing her black minivan. Law enforcement agencies across the region were alerted to watch for the stolen vehicle.
From the Beach to the State Line
It was eventually spotted on Interstate 10 near the Daphne exit, prompting a pursuit that continued through Mobile and across the state line into Mississippi. The chase ended on Highway 605 South, where officers used stop sticks to disable the minivan’s tires.
The route told its own story. Interstate 10 near Daphne is one of the busiest segments of highway on the Gulf Coast, where commuters, beach traffic and freight haulers converge on the Bayway approach to Mobile. A pursuit through that corridor — across the Mobile Bay causeway, through the city’s interstate junctions and onward into Mississippi — required deputies, troopers and municipal officers to coordinate lane by lane, with agencies handing off responsibility at each jurisdictional line. Stop sticks, the collapsible spike strips deployed ahead of a fleeing vehicle, are the standard tool for ending such chases without a collision: punctured tires slow the vehicle gradually, letting officers bring it to a controlled stop rather than forcing a crash at highway speed.
Stolen-vehicle alerts move fast in the modern system. Once the minivan’s description went out over regional dispatch channels, every patrol computer along the Gulf Coast could see the plate and the vehicle details, turning hundreds of ordinary traffic stops into potential intercept points. Automated license plate readers mounted on patrol cars and at fixed locations add another layer, pinging dispatch when a flagged plate passes a camera. Investigators have not said whether such a reader produced the sighting near Daphne, but the alert-and-spot pattern — hours after the carjacking, dozens of miles away — is the system working as designed.
Goss-Richards and Andrews were taken into custody by multiple law enforcement agencies involved in the pursuit. Both face charges stemming from the chase itself, filed by Mississippi Highway Patrol, in addition to a hold placed by the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office on first-degree robbery charges.
First-degree robbery under Alabama law covers thefts involving a deadly weapon or serious physical injury, and it carries a sentencing range measured in decades rather than years. The hold means Baldwin County investigators intend to bring the pair back to face Alabama charges once Mississippi’s process — initial appearances and any local charges — runs its course, a handoff coordinated between prosecutors in both states.
The minivan itself became evidence once the chase ended, photographed where it rolled to a stop on Highway 605 and processed for fingerprints, DNA and anything the pair left behind. Recovered vehicles from violent crime cases are held until prosecutors release them, which can take months; for the Gulf Shores woman whose Sunday began with a gun in her face, the car’s return will mark the case’s slow turn toward court.
The Victims
Authorities said additional charges are expected as the investigation continues. The shooting victim was transported to USA Medical Center in Mobile, where he underwent emergency surgery. Authorities said he was listed in stable condition following the procedure.
USA Medical Center, the downtown Mobile hospital affiliated with the University of South Alabama, serves as the region’s primary trauma center, receiving the most serious injuries from across south Alabama and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. A gunshot wound to the abdomen is among the most time-critical injuries trauma teams treat, and the hospital’s surgeons are equipped to operate on the internal injuries such wounds can cause. The second person targeted in the Foley shooting was not struck, authorities said.
Gulf Shores police spokesman Sgt. Jason Woodruff confirmed that the woman who was abducted in Gulf Shores was not physically injured during the ordeal.
How the abduction unfolded — and how the woman came to be released or separated from the pair — remains part of the active investigation, and authorities have released few details about the circumstances in the beach city. What is clear from the sequence officials describe is a rapid escalation: from an armed abduction in Gulf Shores, to a shooting and carjacking at a recreation property near Foley, to a highway pursuit that crossed two states, all within a matter of hours on a Sunday.
An Investigation Across Three Jurisdictions
Investigators in Baldwin County spent the days after the arrests piecing together the pair’s movements, interviewing the victims and witnesses from both the Gulf Shores abduction and the Foley shooting, and working with Gulf Shores police and prosecutors to align the charges. The FBI and other federal partners are occasionally consulted in multi-state violent crime cases, though officials have not indicated federal charges are planned.
The connection between the two crimes — how the suspects came to be in Gulf Shores, and how the abduction escalated into the shooting near Foley — remains the central question of the investigation. Officials have not described any prior relationship between the suspects and either victim, and have not said whether the victims knew one another. Detectives from the sheriff’s office and Gulf Shores police have each canvassed for surveillance video from the two scenes, a process that can take days when businesses and homes along the routes are checked one by one.
Extradition between Alabama and Mississippi is routine under interstate compacts, but the sequence matters practically: defendants arrested in Mississippi on Mississippi charges are processed through that state’s courts first, with bond set there, before the demanding state’s warrant is executed. Baldwin County’s hold ensures that once Mississippi’s claims are satisfied, the pair will be transported to the county jail in Robertsdale to answer the Alabama charges.
The case also put a spotlight on the coordination that modern pursuits demand. Radio interoperability, shared databases that flag stolen vehicles to every patrol car, and the plain institutional habit of agencies trusting one another’s handoffs all played a role in ending the chase on Highway 605 without injuries to bystanders. Sheriff’s officials have noted in the past that pursuits along Interstate 10 are among the most dangerous operations deputies undertake, given the volume of traffic on the corridor that links Florida’s panhandle to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Sunday drivers on the route got an unplanned view of the operation. Pursuits on Interstate 10 draw gawkers and gridlock in equal measure, and officers worked to keep lanes moving around the stops — a reminder to regular commuters on the bayway corridor of how quickly a routine drive can turn into a rolling emergency spanning two states.
For the victims, the aftermath continues in courtrooms rather than hospital bays. The Foley shooting victim faces a long recovery from abdominal surgery; the Gulf Shores woman, physically unharmed, will be a central witness in the robbery case. Prosecutors said the investigation remains active, and additional charges — in either state — remain possible as the full account of that Sunday comes together.
The rapid sequence of events — a shooting, an abduction, a carjacking and a multi-agency pursuit spanning three states’ worth of jurisdiction in a matter of hours — underscored the level of coordination required among Baldwin County, Mobile-area and Mississippi law enforcement to bring the incident to a close without further injury.