Violence disrupted the usual yesterday evening bustle at a Gastonia Walmart parking lot, as shots were fired in a confrontation between two parties. The Gastonia Police Department reported an incident at around 7 p.m. on East Franklin Boulevard that appears to have been spurred by road rage, leading to one injury and an arrest. The injured, a 23-year-old woman, suffered wounds presumed to be non-life-threatening, and a man shot in self-defense has not been charged, according to QC News.
Makiah Dakota Lippencott, a 25-year-old involved in the altercation, was taken into custody by police following the incident; he now faces charges of discharging a firearm into occupied property and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to inflict serious injury, as WBTV reports. After the exchange of gunfire between those in two different vehicles, Lippencott was arrested and is being held without bond police are still piecing together the events that led to the heated exchange.
The sequence of events remains under investigation by the Gastonia Police. Eyewitness accounts and further evidence are being gathered to ascertain the full narrative of the incident. WCNC confirms that detectives have preliminarily labeled the shooting a road rage incident, following the altercation on East Franklin Boulevard, a detail that hints at the spiral from a dispute on the road to gunfire.
The suspect, Lippencott, is slated for a court appearance this morning to respond to the charges. The Gastonia Police Department has not yet released further information about the case, and the names of the injured woman and the man claiming self-defense have not been disclosed at this time.
