MOBILE, Ala. — The Mobile Police Department logged a series of assaults, a shooting and two domestic incidents over the Labor Day weekend, according to department reports and news releases. In several of the cases no one has been publicly identified, and in at least two the available accounts do not agree with one another on basic points.
What follows is a roundup of those incidents as they were reported. Where the accounts conflict, both versions are presented rather than one being chosen over the other. Where a report is unclear, that is stated plainly. No suspect has been named by police in any of the incidents described here.
A note on how this coverage is handled: charges are allegations, and anyone charged with a crime is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. Victims are not identified or characterized in this article, and the accounts of what happened to them are kept to what is necessary to describe the police response.
Venetia Road: two accounts that do not match
Officers were called to the 2100 block of Venetia Road at about 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 5, in reference to a domestic incident. That much is consistent across both accounts available to South Alabama News.
Both accounts also agree on the broad outline of what officers found. A man had allegedly assaulted a woman he knew at the residence. During the incident, the man injured himself — described in one account as having cut himself — and officers took him to a hospital for treatment. He has not been publicly identified.
The accounts diverge on what happened next, and the difference is significant. One account, drawn from police records, states that the man faces charges of second-degree domestic violence and first-degree rape. A separate account, drawn from an MPD news release, states that no arrest had been made.
Those two statements cannot both be a complete description of the case’s status. It is possible they were accurate at different points in time, or that a charge was filed without an arrest being effected while the man remained hospitalized, or that one account is simply in error. South Alabama News does not know which, and is not in a position to resolve the discrepancy from the material available. Both are reported here so that readers can see the full state of the public record rather than a tidied version of it.
Because no one has been identified and the charging status is unsettled, this newspaper is withholding further characterization of the case. The allegations described above are allegations. Any person charged is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and a charge that has been filed can be amended, reduced or dropped entirely as an investigation proceeds.
North Joachim Street: robbery and strangulation charges
Later the same day, officers responded to a second domestic-related call. According to the department’s report, officers arrived at the 50 block of North Joachim Street at about 11:20 p.m. Saturday.
Police reported that a man approached a woman he knew while armed with a gun, took her belongings and physically assaulted her. The suspect was not identified in the report.
The report lists charges of first-degree robbery and domestic-violence strangulation. As with the Venetia Road case, those are accusations rather than findings, and the person accused has not been named publicly.
The report available to this newspaper does not say whether the man was located, whether he was taken into custody, or what the woman’s condition was. Those details are simply absent from the account, and none have been supplied here in their place.
Westwood Street shooting: an account with an unresolved detail
A man was wounded by gunfire in the 600 block of Westwood Street at about 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 5. His injury was described as appearing non-life-threatening, and investigators said the suspect fired multiple shots at him.
Here again, two accounts describe the same shooting in slightly different terms. One states that officers arrived at the scene, found a man with a non-life-threatening gunshot injury, and took him to a hospital. The other, drawn from an MPD news release, states that officers responded to a hospital after a man arrived there with a gunshot wound. Whether the man was transported from the scene by officers or made his own way to the hospital is not clear from the two accounts read together.
One of the accounts contains a further sentence that this newspaper cannot make sense of. Attached to the paragraph describing the victim is the line, “He faces charges of second-degree assault.” As written, the sentence appears to say the wounded man is the one charged, which does not follow from anything else in either account — both describe him as the person who was shot at, and both describe the shooter as an unidentified suspect who remains at large.
The most likely explanation is a drafting error in the source report, but South Alabama News is not going to guess. The sentence is reported here as it appeared, along with the observation that the accounts are unclear on this point and that no charging information for the Westwood Street shooting can be reliably stated. No one has been named in connection with it.
What is clearly established is this: a man was shot in the 600 block of Westwood Street on Saturday evening, his wound was not believed to be life-threatening, multiple shots were fired at him, no suspect has been publicly identified, and the case remains under investigation. One account described the matter as developing.
St. Stephens Road: assault during an argument
On Monday morning, officers were called to the area of the 2400 block of St. Stephens Road at about 8:30 a.m. after a report of an assault during an argument.
According to the department’s account, a man allegedly assaulted a woman he knew during the argument. Officers arriving at the scene found the woman with minor injuries. The man had left before officers got there.
A charge of second-degree assault was reported in connection with the incident. The man was not identified in the report, and the investigation was described as active.
As in the other cases described here, the reported charge is an allegation. The account available does not state whether the man was later located.
Griffin Street: man seriously injured in group assault
Also on Monday, officers responded to the 1700 block of Griffin Street at about 3 p.m. after a report of an assault near a field. They found a man with serious injuries, and he was taken to a hospital for treatment.
Investigators determined that the man had been assaulted by multiple subjects, according to the report. No suspects were identified, no number of people involved was given, and no charges were listed.
The investigation was described as active. The report available to this newspaper contains no further detail about the circumstances leading up to the assault or the man’s condition after he reached the hospital.
What the record does and does not establish
Taken together, the weekend’s reports describe five incidents in the city of Mobile between the early hours of Saturday, Sept. 5, and Monday afternoon. Two are domestic in nature, one involved gunfire, and two are assaults, one of them by a group.
Several things are common to all of them. No suspect has been publicly identified in any case. Several investigations were still open when the reports were issued. And in at least two of the incidents, the accounts available conflict or contain a detail this newspaper cannot verify.
That is a normal state of affairs in the first days after a holiday weekend, when reports are compiled quickly and information moves between patrol officers, investigators and public information staff. It is not, however, a reason to smooth over the gaps in print. Readers are better served by knowing that the Venetia Road case is described in one account as carrying two charges and in another as producing no arrest, and by knowing that the Westwood Street account contains a sentence that appears misplaced, than by being handed a clean narrative that the underlying documents do not support.
South Alabama News will report clarifications or corrections from the Mobile Police Department as they become available, including any charging decisions, arrests or identifications in these cases.
How this newspaper covers domestic and sexual violence
Two of the incidents above involve allegations of domestic violence, and one involves an allegation of rape. Coverage of those cases follows a deliberately narrow approach.
Victims are not named, described or characterized. Their relationships to the accused are reported only to the extent police described them — in these cases, that the people involved were known to one another. The physical details of the alleged assaults are not recounted beyond what is necessary to explain the police response and any injuries reported, and no graphic description appears in this article.
That restraint is not squeamishness. Identifying details can expose people to further harm, and vivid descriptions serve no reporting purpose that a plain account does not serve as well. It also reflects the plain fact that these are early-stage police reports about incidents that have not been tested in court.
The same principle applies at the other end of the case. Everyone described in this article as facing a charge has been accused, not convicted. Charges filed in the hours after an incident can change substantially as investigators gather evidence. Where this article uses words like “alleged” and “reportedly,” those words are doing real work and should be read as written.
Where to get help and how to report information
Anyone with information about the incidents described above can contact the Mobile Police Department. Because the reports available to this newspaper do not include a case number, a tip line or the name of an investigating officer, no contact details are printed here; those are available directly from the department, which is the appropriate point of contact for anyone with information to share or questions about a specific case.
Domestic violence resources are available in Mobile County through law enforcement and through advocacy organizations that work with survivors. Readers seeking help should contact local authorities or a recognized advocacy organization directly. This article does not list phone numbers or web addresses because the source material provides none, and publishing an unverified contact for a crisis service would risk sending someone in an emergency to the wrong place.
Anyone in immediate danger should call 911.
Update: Arrest Made in the Westwood Street Shooting
The Mobile Police Department has made an arrest in the Westwood Street shooting described above. According to an MPD news release, 23-year-old Montycello Hines Jr. of Mobile was arrested Tuesday, Sept. 8, and charged with first-degree assault in connection with the shooting reported around 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 5, in the 500 block of Westwood Street.
Investigators allege that Hines fired several shots at another man, striking and wounding him. “Officers discovered a male subject fired multiple shots at the victim,” the department said in a statement. “The victim was transported to a local hospital by personal vehicle for treatment.” That account matches the initial report, in which the wounded man reached the hospital in a private vehicle rather than by ambulance.
Hines was located Tuesday and booked into Mobile County Metro Jail, according to jail logs. First-degree assault is a Class B felony under Alabama law, carrying a sentencing range of two to 20 years on conviction. A charge is an accusation, and a defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.
No further details about a possible motive have been released, and the department has not said whether the two men knew one another. The investigation remains open.