Rufus Howard Ellis III, a 36-year-old Black man from Valdosta, was shot on May 3, 2014, outside Park Chase Apartments on Old Statenville Road. Police were called just before 5 p.m.; officers found Ellis inside his car with multiple gunshot wounds. He was taken to South Georgia Medical Center and did not survive.

Investigators quickly focused on an 18-year-old Valdosta man, Brian Levon Charlton-Simmons, and issued a BOLO because they believed he might be leaving Georgia. Authorities said the shooting stemmed from an earlier argument at a nightclub and became a deadly daylight encounter. By the following Saturday evening, Hamilton County deputies in Florida had taken Charlton-Simmons into custody, and Valdosta police said he was being charged in Ellis’s death. A Lowndes County grand jury later returned an indictment that included felony murder, aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

Were there witnesses at Park Chase Apartments that day who saw how the confrontation escalated or the vehicle Ellis was in before the shooting?