One Gateway student dead, another injured in N.C. shooting
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Gateway linebacker Darrell Turner was fatally shot in Durham, N.C., late Thursday. -
Gateway quarterback Thomas Woodson was wounded in a shooting that killed teammate Darrell Turner in Durham, N.C., late Thursday.
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A Gateway High School football player was killed and a teammate was wounded in a double shooting late Thursday at a shopping center in Durham, N.C.
Friends of rising Gateway senior Darrell Turner already have put up a Facebook page mourning his death. Mr. Turner and his teammate, junior Thomas Woodson, were shot in the parking lot outside an AT&T store near the Comfort Inn and Suites hotel, where their team was staying on the way to a camp in Florida, Durham police said.
Mr. Turner was pronounced dead at Duke University Hospital a short time later, according to news reports from Durham. Mr. Woodson, who will be a junior, suffered a non-life-threatening injury to the leg.
Investigators learned that the shooting suspect was staying at the nearby SpringHill Marriot hotel, police said. Officers arrested him there around 2:10 a.m. today.
The suspect had been eating at an Outback Steakhouse across the road a few minutes before the shooting and didn't know the victims, police said.
Durham police Cpl. Brian Schnee, the lead investigator, said police were interviewing witnesses and their families, including Mr. Woodson, whose mother arrived in North Carolina this morning.
He said the evidence so far indicates the shooting is a "tragic, random, isolated" incident following an altercation between the suspect and the group of athletes as they encountered each other for the first time.
He would not discuss what witnesses have told him regarding the incident but said, "I don't have a clear motive."
The accused shooter, Gabriel James Gamez, 22, had just arrived from San Antonio, Texas, where he has a minor criminal record. He has been charged with murder and with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury.
Mr. Gamez was being held in the Durham County Jail without bond.
Darrell Turner, the victim's father, said his son was with several other Gateway football players visiting Duke University and the University of North Carolina, two schools where he could have continued his football career.
First Published June 24, 2011 8:02 am
