ECSO searching for suspect in Untreiner Avenue drive-by shooting

ENSLEY, Fla. — The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office is searching for a man wanted in connection with a drive-by shooting last week. Kei’Yhaun Irby, 20, is wanted in connection with the shooting that occurred June 16 on Untreiner Avenue, and investigators are asking the public’s help in finding him.

According to the sheriff’s office, Irby was seen leaving the scene in a red Kia Soul. The vehicle description is one of the details investigators have released as they work to locate the suspect, and detectives are encouraging anyone who may have seen the car in the area around the time of the shooting, or who knows where it has been since, to come forward.

The shooting sent one person in another vehicle to the hospital after a gray SUV was found flipped upside down on Untreiner near Hannah Street. The overturned vehicle, photographed at the scene by deputies, underscored the violence of the encounter, which unfolded on a residential street in the Ensley area of Escambia County, west of Pensacola. The condition of the person who was hospitalized was not detailed in the information released by investigators.

What investigators know so far

Drive-by shootings present particular challenges for law enforcement. The shooter is usually in motion, the encounter lasts seconds, and witnesses often have only a fleeting look at the vehicle or the person inside it. In this case, investigators have pieced together the essentials: a shooting on a specific block of Untreiner Avenue, a victim transported for treatment, an overturned SUV near the intersection with Hannah Street, and a suspect identified and named within days of the incident.

Identifying a suspect relatively quickly is a significant step, but it is only the middle of the process. Deputies must still locate Irby, take him into custody safely, and assemble the evidence needed for prosecutors to pursue charges. That is where the public comes in. The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office serves a county of roughly 330,000 residents that wraps around Pensacola, and deputies routinely lean on community tips to find suspects who are not staying in one place.

Anyone with information about Irby’s whereabouts is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 850-433-STOP or the ECSO at 436-9620. The two numbers serve different purposes. Calls to the sheriff’s office go directly to deputies and investigators, while calls to Crime Stoppers are handled by a separate tip-taking organization that forwards information to the appropriate agency without collecting the caller’s name.

How Crime Stoppers works

Crime Stoppers programs operate across the Gulf Coast and around the country on a simple premise: some people know things about a crime but hesitate to get involved. The program gives those people a way to pass along what they know anonymously, either by phone or through online and app-based tips, without testifying in open court about who they are. Tipsters are issued a code number instead, and any reward money connected to a case is paid through that number, preserving the caller’s anonymity even if a tip leads to an arrest.

The arrangement matters in cases like this one, where the suspect and any witnesses may move in the same social circles. Residents who would be reluctant to pick up the phone and talk to a deputy about a neighbor or an acquaintance are often willing to give a tip anonymously. Investigators, for their part, can act on the substance of a tip — an address, a vehicle sighting, a social media post — without the tipster ever being identified.

Deputies caution that anyone who spots a wanted suspect should not attempt to approach or detain the person. Suspects facing serious charges may be dangerous, and confrontations by civilians put both the resident and the suspect at risk. The recommended course is to call 911 if the suspect is seen in real time, or to pass the information along through the tip lines already released by investigators.

The Ensley area, where the shooting occurred, is one of the older communities in unincorporated Escambia County, made up largely of residential streets like Untreiner Avenue that sit between the commercial corridors of Mobile Highway and Nine Mile Road. Neighborhoods there, as in much of the county, rely on deputies working patrol zones that cover wide territories, which makes sightings from residents — a car parked where it should not be, a person moving between houses — especially useful.

The investigation continues

Sheriff’s office investigations of shootings typically move along several tracks at once. Deputies canvass the neighborhood for doorbell cameras and surveillance footage, which have become among the most productive sources of evidence in residential shootings. Detectives interview witnesses and the victim. Forensic teams process the scene for shell casings, damage patterns and anything else that can establish how the shooting unfolded. And investigators follow the suspect’s known associates, haunts and digital footprint.

The red Kia Soul is a detail that investigators hope the public will keep in mind. Vehicle sightings are among the most actionable tips in a case like this: a resident who remembers seeing the car — in the neighborhood, at a gas station, on a highway shoulder — gives detectives a location and a time, and those data points can be checked against other information the office already holds.

The flipped gray SUV near Hannah Street is likewise a piece of the puzzle. An overturned vehicle at the scene raises questions about whether it was struck during the shooting, ran off the road, or was involved in some other portion of the encounter, and answers to those questions can clarify the sequence of events that deputies have so far described only in outline.

What happens after an arrest

Once Irby is located, the case will move from the search phase into the court system. In Florida, drive-by shootings carry serious potential penalties, particularly when someone is injured, and prosecutors weigh evidence gathered during the investigation when deciding what charges to file. Deputies have not released the name of the person who was hospitalized, and it is not unusual for agencies to withhold details that could complicate the case or expose a victim to further harm.

Residents of the neighborhood, meanwhile, are left to deal with the aftermath. A shooting on a residential street rattles a community even when the people involved are strangers to it. Sheriff’s offices in the Pensacola area have generally encouraged residents in such situations to keep reporting what they see, since a steady flow of tips — even ones that seem minor at the time — often provides the connective tissue that closes a case.

In this case the ask from investigators is specific: information about Kei’Yhaun Irby, 20, who is wanted in connection with the June 16 drive-by shooting on Untreiner Avenue, and about the red Kia Soul he was seen leaving the scene in. Tips can go to Crime Stoppers at 850-433-STOP or to the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office at 436-9620, and anyone who sees the suspect in person is asked to call 911 rather than approach him.

The sheriff’s office has not said whether additional arrests are anticipated, and the investigation remains active. Updates, when they come, are typically posted through the agency’s official channels, and residents who provided tips through Crime Stoppers can check on the status of their tips using the code number issued when they first called.

Wanted-person bulletins like this one circulate through several channels at once. The sheriff’s office posts the request to its official social media accounts and website, regional news outlets carry the details, and Crime Stoppers may feature the case in its own weekly roundups of unsolved or active matters. The repetition is deliberate: investigators want the suspect’s name, age and vehicle description to be familiar to as many eyes as possible across the county, because a wanted person is most often located not by a detective but by someone who recognizes the face or the car in an unexpected place.

For residents wondering what information is actually useful, deputies and tip-line operators generally say the same thing: report specifics, not conclusions. An exact time, a street name, a direction of travel, a partial plate or a description of who was seen getting into or out of a vehicle is worth far more than a general suspicion. Even an imperfect recollection — the car “was probably a red Kia, late model” — can be cross-checked against other tips and surveillance footage, and partial details from multiple callers are routinely stitched together into a usable lead.

Staying safe while helping

Deputies also remind the public of the line between helping and intervening. Sharing an official bulletin is safe and helpful. Asking around among acquaintances about a suspect’s whereabouts is riskier, particularly if word gets back to the person being sought or to others involved in the case. The anonymous tip lines exist precisely so that residents do not have to conduct their own inquiries; the professionals working the case can take a raw lead and develop it without exposing the person who provided it.

The sheriff’s office has asked that anyone with information about Irby’s whereabouts call Crime Stoppers at 850-433-STOP or the ECSO at 436-9620. The investigation into the June 16 shooting on Untreiner Avenue remains active, and any additional details released will come from the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office as the case develops.