A Mobile County constable was arrested and charged with murder after a late-night shooting in the parking lot of a club along the Causeway in Spanish Fort, according to police.
Spanish Fort Police Chief David Edgar said officers were called shortly after midnight Sunday to a report that a person had been shot outside Traders, a club that sits on the Causeway. When officers arrived, they found 52-year-old Jeffrey Carter McMillan dead in the parking lot.
Suspect remained at the scene
Edgar said the man suspected of firing the fatal shot stayed at the scene and was identified by officers as 68-year-old Larry Lambert Sheffield of Semmes. According to the chief, Sheffield identified himself as a Mobile County constable. Records kept by the Mobile County Constables Association listed a constable of the same name as serving Precinct 24.
Investigators believe the confrontation began inside Traders, the chief said, though officers received conflicting accounts of whether it started as a verbal dispute or a physical one. Whatever its origins, the altercation spilled out of the building and into the parking lot, where it turned physical.
A single shot at close range
According to Edgar, Sheffield produced a semi-automatic handgun during the struggle and fired one round at close range, striking McMillan in the head. The chief said three or four bystanders were in the parking lot when the shot was fired, and roughly 20 people were inside the club at the time.
Sheffield was taken into custody at the scene and charged with murder, Edgar said. He was transported to the Baldwin County jail, where booking records showed he was processed in the early afternoon Sunday.
Questions about a prior record
Corrections records reviewed after the arrest indicated that a man by the same name had previously been booked into the Baldwin County jail in July 1999. Edgar confirmed the earlier booking but said the nature of those charges was not clear from the available records.
The killing sent a jolt through Spanish Fort, a Baldwin County community better known for its shopping district and quiet neighborhoods than for violent crime. The Causeway, the low ribbon of roadway that carries traffic across the head of Mobile Bay, is dotted with restaurants and clubs that draw patrons from both sides of the bay, and the shooting drew immediate attention on both shores.
Constables in Alabama are elected peace officers who serve at the precinct level, a position rooted in the state’s older county government structure. Their duties have historically centered on serving court papers and assisting with civil process rather than routine patrol work, and the office carries limited law-enforcement authority. The fact that the man charged in the case identified himself as a constable added an unusual dimension to what authorities otherwise described as a confrontation between two patrons.
Police did not release additional details about McMillan or about what may have prompted the dispute inside the club. Chief Edgar said the investigation was continuing and that officers were working to reconcile the differing accounts offered by witnesses in and around the building.
As of the booking Sunday afternoon, Sheffield remained in the Baldwin County jail on the murder charge. Formal proceedings in the case were expected to follow in Baldwin County, where the shooting occurred.