MOBILE, Ala. — Mobile police arrested an 18-year-old man on a murder charge late one Tuesday night, just hours after investigators publicly named him a person of interest in a fatal shooting that had shaken a quiet dead-end street off Webb Avenue.
Darrius Lamar Chestnut was booked into Mobile County Metro Jail shortly after 11 p.m. on one count of murder in connection with the death of 19-year-old Dave Levon Martez Populus. According to jail records, Chestnut had no prior arrests on file in Mobile County before that night.
The case began days earlier, when officers responded to a report of a shooting on a dead-end stretch near Webb Avenue. Emergency medical technicians arrived to find Populus already dead at the scene, and investigators quickly opened a homicide investigation. Detectives spent the following days piecing together what led to the shooting and identifying who might have been involved.
By Tuesday, investigators had zeroed in on Chestnut and released his name publicly as a person of interest, asking for the public’s help locating him. Hours later, he was in custody.
Neighbors along Webb Avenue told reporters at the time that neither Chestnut nor Populus appeared to live in the immediate area, leaving some residents uncertain why the two men had crossed paths on that particular street. At the time of his arrest, jail records listed Chestnut’s home address on Seneca Street, in a neighborhood between South Ann and Ross streets.
Mobile police have not publicly detailed a motive for the shooting, and it remains unclear what brought Populus and Chestnut together on Ridge Street in the moments before the gunfire. Cases like this typically move next to a preliminary hearing, where prosecutors lay out probable cause before a judge, followed by presentation to a Mobile County grand jury.
Homicide investigations in Mobile are handled by the Mobile Police Department’s violent crimes unit, which continues to investigate shooting deaths across the city as they arise. Residents with information about unsolved violent crimes in Mobile are routinely encouraged to contact local police or Crime Stoppers.