MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Morgantown Police Chief Ed Preston provided updates on a number of investigations following a busy start to the week.
Police are still actively seeking one suspect in a shooting that occurred Monday night on Listravia Avenue, injuring one person who required emergency surgery.
Preston said the victim is now doing better after taking three gunshot wounds and is providing information to investigators.
“Now that he is able to communicate more, the investigation is still ongoing,” he said. “The detectives have served a couple search warrants as a result of that.”
A potential suspect is known to investigators, but no public identification has been released.
“We currently have an active investigation with good leads, good suspect information, and we’re moving forward with it,” Preston said. “We don’t believe this was a random act. We know what the motivation is at this point in time. We know who we believe to be involved, but as a department we have to gather all the facts still to move the case forward.”
Police have repeatedly said that the public is in no danger, calling this an isolated incident.
Elsewhere, the department is reviewing the actions of officers who were forced to draw their weapons — though never fired them — at Ruby Memorial Hospital earlier this week.
Wilbert William Vaughn III, 45, of Morgantown is charged with attempted malicious assault after a brief stand-off with police. Vaughn had been discharged from the hospital but refused to leave, police said. When police arrived to coax him to leave, Preston said Vaughn drew a knife.
“The officers ended up having to pull their weapons on him and take him under control at gunpoint due to the fact that he was attempting to assault them with a deadly weapon,” Preston said.
Police took Vaughn into custody without further incident, but the incident is under further view as per department norm.
“With our agency, any time an officer does anything in excess of normal handcuffing procedures, we review every one of those uses of force to determine whether they were in compliance with state code or federal code or in compliance with policy and training,” Preston said.
On Tuesday, a third incident involving WVU defensive linemen Darius Stills led to a citation for Stills. He was driving without properly clearing his windshield of frost and ice, resulting in an autopedestrian accident.
19-year-old Joyelle Wiliams was injured, though has already been released from the hospital.
“It’s a learning experience because no one was hurt,” Preston said. “And hurt is a relative term, because the female pedestrian did suffer abrasions and bruising from this, but she was not fatally injured or catastrophically injured.”
On Wednesday, police also took a Fairmont man into custody who was wanted in Morgantown on outstanding warrants following a brutal domestic violence incident in September.
Chancellor Christopher, 42, is charged with malicious wounding.