WILMER, Ala. — A dispute between neighbors over property damage ended in gunfire on a rural Mobile County road Thursday night, leaving one man dead and a suspect behind bars, according to the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies responding to a call on Glenwood Farms Lane West around 7:40 p.m. found Billy Joe Earnest bleeding behind the wheel of a pickup truck that had crashed after he was shot. Earnest’s grandchildren were riding with him at the time but were not physically injured, according to sheriff’s spokeswoman Lori Myles.
Investigators say the call came from Terry Wayne Poole, 53, who told deputies on the scene that he had shot Earnest. According to Myles, a preliminary investigation pointed to a long-simmering conflict between the two men over destruction of property as the motive behind the shooting.
Poole was arrested and booked into Mobile County Metro Jail early Friday morning on charges of discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle and murder. A Mobile County judge ordered later that morning that he be held without bond, meaning Poole will remain in custody at least until his case is reviewed further by the courts.
Court records show Poole has been arrested on six other occasions dating back to 1988. His most recent brush with the law came in 2012, when he faced a harassment charge; he was ultimately acquitted.
The shooting is the latest reminder of how quickly disputes between neighbors in rural Mobile County can escalate. Glenwood Farms Lane West sits in a quiet, sparsely populated stretch of Wilmer, a community that rarely sees violent crime make headlines. Neighbors in the area were shaken by the news that a dispute many likely viewed as a minor property disagreement ended with one of their own shot to death in front of his grandchildren.
The Mobile County Sheriff’s Office said its investigation into the shooting remains active. Prosecutors will ultimately determine how to proceed with the case against Poole, who faces the possibility of decades in prison if convicted on the murder charge. Anyone with additional information about the confrontation between the two men has been asked to contact MCSO investigators.
Earnest’s death leaves a family in Wilmer grieving the loss of a grandfather in circumstances neighbors say never should have turned deadly. Sheriff’s officials have not released further details about the nature of the underlying property dispute or how long tensions between the two men had been building before Thursday’s shooting.