Local authorities are investigating the shooting of a Shelby County man who turned up at a local hospital.
According to the report by Sgt. Trey Boucher with the McKenzie Police Department, Sassion Thomas, 29, was shot twice in the upper right side of his chest, once on the lower left side of his back, once on the left wrist, and around three times on his lower left arm.
Thomas was transported by a private citizen to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Carroll County and then airlifted to The Med in Memphis.
Huntingdon Director of Public Safety Walter Smothers said Monday that he had heard that Thomas had since been released from The Med.
Boucher states in his report that he received a call at around 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 19 from the Huntingdon Police Department regarding a gunshot victim at BMH, who might have been shot in McKenzie.
Boucher then went to BMH and spoke with Thomas before he was airlifted. Thomas told Boucher that he didn’t know what happened, where it happened, or who shot him.
A Ripley man, who was apparently there at the hospital, told officers that “they found Mr. Thomas [on a] street close to Sonic in McKenzie and put Mr. Thomas in the car and brought him to the hospital.”
After giving incomplete and confusing information about the incident to officers at the hospital, the Ripley man was taken to the McKenzie Police Department for further questioning. There he told officers that Thomas had been taken to the hospital by a female subject.
The MPD contacted the woman, and she came in for questioning.
According to the report, she told officers that Thomas had been shot in Drew Court in Huntingdon, and she drove him to the hospital.
The investigation was then turned over to the Huntingdon Police Department.
According to Smothers, the same woman named in Boucher’s report told his officers that Thomas had been shot on Clark Street in Huntingdon, but when officers went to the location to investigate, they found no physical evidence of a shooting there.
“Right now, we really don’t know where the shooting took place,” said Smothers.
Smothers also said that investigators have received contradictory information from other people, and he believes the shooting may be gang related.
