Early Wednesday afternoon a local business owner had to flee for his life as a suspect allegedly fired three gunshots at him as he attempted to confront an alleged burglar.
“It’s kids,” Kevin Kelley, owner and operator of K&G Mowers said. “I believe one hundred percent it’s older people involved in using these kids. In fact, an older person in a two-door silver Honda drove up and handed the kid the pistol …”
According to Paris Police, at about 3:45 p.m., Kelley followed the suspect in a vehicle to the 200 block of E. Provine Street, attempting to talk with the suspect, when a vehicle approached the suspect and someone within the vehicle “handed them a pistol.”
“For the past few weeks praying about this God has revealed a lot and yesterday confirmed,” Kelley said.
He said the children they have caught already had multiple felonies due to others using them to commit crimes so they would not get in trouble.
“We as a community need to come together and do something about the real people behind these crimes,” he said.
Kelley said K&G Mowers has heightened its security.
“We had to highly increase security here,” Kelley said. “We have had to engineer crazy latch’s, locks, bolts, spend thousands on better cameras and motion sensors for the alarm systems. We had to also eliminate all delays in our alarms so they immediately alert the police.”
Kelley said he and his family feared the suspect or those involved would “do a drive-by at our house last night.
“There is uneasiness because they’re kids between 11 and 17 with guns and no regard for lives, no fear of God or death, and no concern for people at all,” he said. “Yesterday I felt like a soldier in Afghanistan facing a child with a pistol shooting at me.”
Kelley said he heard the suspect say, “I have two felonies, I’m not going back to jail alive.
“Thinking about the police chasing him and hearing his words and feeling a responsibility if something happens because I didn’t (do something) to apprehend him for the police,” he said. “Then there’s the heaviness as I’m chasing the Honda to try to get the older one behind all this and letting him get away wondering if it’s my fault if something else happens … or all the other businesses that are going to get robbed and people going to get hurt because I didn’t do more.”
Kelley said everyone has an opinion, and today, “sitting in this chair, I have a heaviness for the law, that their job is to arrest these people that are shooting people in the streets for simply asking them their name.”
As the investigation continues, Paris police reported no injuries from Wednesday’s altercation.
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