An 18-year-old Pine Bluff man was found shot to death early Wednesday morning, and police are continuing their investigation.
Jefferson County Coroner Chad Kelley identified the man as Parius Hicks, whose body was found after officers responded at about 3:22 a.m. to the area of West 38th Avenue and Hazel Street to a report of a person down.
The slaying was the third in Pine Bluff since Saturday and the seventh so far this year. Last year there were 10 homicides in Pine Bluff.
Kelley pronounced Hicks dead at 4:31 a.m. and listed the cause of death as a gunshot wound to the upper body. The body was sent to the State Crime Laboratory Wednesday morning for an autopsy.
Late Wednesday afternoon, police reported that they had developed a person of interest in the case but are not releasing the name in hopes of locating the individual Wednesday night.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
According to a report from Pine Bluff Police Officer Christopher Fontenette, Hicks was found lying in the street on his back, unresponsive in front of a residence at 2203 W 38th Ave. A pool of blood was beside the body, and one shell casing was found at the scene.
The bloodshed began on Saturday, when David Ibemesi, 30, was found shot inside a vehicle that had hit a house at 2719 S. Cherry St. at 1:11 a.m. and taken to Jefferson Regional Medical Center, where he later died. Jefferson County Coroner Chad Kelley listed the cause of death as multiple gunshot wounds.
On Sunday at approximately 9:30 p.m., the body of Jordan Deshawn Turner, 29, was found lying in the street near the intersection of West Fifth Avenue and Myrtle Street; he was pronounced dead at 11:11 p.m. at the scene by Deputy Coroner Eric Belcher. The cause of death was listed as a gunshot wound to the upper body.
Police have not identified suspects in either slaying.
In a third incident over the weekend, police found Davonte Chapman, 22, shot inside a vehicle that had wrecked in the area of West 23rd Avenue and Oak Street, facing north on the south side of the street.
Pine Bluff Police Officer Jason Boykin reported that Chapman was lying face down in the street, hanging out the passenger side of the vehicle, bleeding from the top of his head. There was also a large amount of blood inside the vehicle.
Chapman was taken to JRMC and later sent to a Little Rock hospital for treatment. The most recent update on his condition came Monday from Pine Bluff Police Office Roy Gober, who said was listed as critical.
In a fourth incident on March 15, for which a 16-year-old Pine Bluff boy will be charged as an adult, a 15-year-old boy was shot and is in critical condition at a Little Rock hospital. Kentarious Whitmore was interviewed with his mother present and allegedly admitted to carrying out the shooting, Pine Bluff Police Detective Cassandra Briggs-McAfee said in a probable cause affidavit presented in district court Tuesday.
Interim Pine Bluff Police Chief Ivan Whitfield said Wednesday that the recent rash of shootings and murders in Pine Bluff in the past few days is systematic of a larger problem that exists not only in the city but across the state and the nation.
“There’s employment, education, social issues and others and those are bigger than the police department and things we can’t control,” he said. “We have the same officers working the same shifts and patrolling the same zones.”
He said officers when officers respond, they try to bring things to a closure as soon as possible.
“We try to be proactive on a lot of things but by their very nature, we can’t be proactive with homicides,” Whitfield said.
He said that homicides in Pine Bluff tend to go in spurts, and detectives work hard to try and solve all of them.
“When detectives make an arrest, it also helps with deterrence because people see that we are going to bring the suspects into the court system,” Whitfield said.
The Rev. Jesse Turner, executive director of Interested Citizens for Voter Registration, said in an email to the Commercial that Hicks was a former student in the ICVR National Pen or Pencil program.
He said Hicks is featured on the national Pen or Pencil website, in publications and instructional power points, and when he was a student at Dollarway, he became a finalist in the Pen or Pencil National Spelling Competition in New Orleans, Louisiana.
“This is heartbreaking to me,” Turner said in the email. “I recently spoke with him during an after school Pen or Pencil session at Pine Bluff High School. He was always respectful to our Pen or Pencil instructors, and he loved the program. This is another tragedy in the city where another life is terminated too young and too soon.”
In his email, Turner said his organization estimates that approximately 300 homicides have been reported in Pine Bluff since 1979, when the ICVR Respect for Life campaign began.
He said of those, 98.9 percent have been black on black crimes with an average age of under 30 for the victims and under 40 for the perpetrators.
Anyone with information about any of the homicides should contact the Detective Division at 730-2090 or the dispatch center at 541-5300.
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