This story will appear in this week's print edition.
Christopher Walker told the Jackson Free Press three weeks ago that either someone from his old Wood Street neighborhood would shoot him, or he would shoot one of them. And he blamed that inevitability, as he characterized it, on his former mentor, Mayor Frank Melton.
That prediction proved prescient Friday when Craig Spiva was shot three times in his back, the back of his head and in the buttocks on Maple Street, near the corner of Wood, with a small-caliber handgun—but survived after surgery at University Medical Center. Law enforcement has previously linked Spiva to a crime group that police call the "Wood Street Players."
Spiva's Wood Street friends are saying that Walker came after him; Walker is saying that a group of men came after him and that he is the one who called the police afterward while he hid from them in an empty house. Police-scanner chatter prior to the shooting Friday indicated that people around Wood Street were looking for Walker.
Walker, also known as Smiley, says that he came out of the store at Maple and Wood streets, and a white car and a blue or green van full of men screeched up in front. As they jumped out with guns, he said, he started running down Maple Street.
"I know who it was," Walker said Saturday. "It was guys from Wood Street. They shot him (Spiva) trying to shoot me." Walker said he didn't have a gun and ran into an empty house where he called police and City Hall repeatedly, "but they kept me on hold for damn near 30 minutes."
"I called Frank's office; Frank still ain't called me back, yet. I called Shirlene (Anderson); she weren't in her office." Whoever he got on the phone, he said, he told them, "I'm over here at the corner of Maple and Wood, and those n*ggers are trying to kill me. Y'all need to help me."
But nobody responded, he said.
Spiva's friends tell a dramatically different story. On Monday, Albert "Batman" Donelson told the JFP that his friend Spiva had gone into the store to get a soda pop; when he came out, "Smiley shot him." In an interview in his hospital room Monday, Spiva told WAPT much the same story: He came out of the store, saw Walker, walked past and tried to get in his car. When he did, Walker started firing, and he ran down Maple. Three shots hit him before his brother, Dedrick Dodds, and Albert Donelson's cousin, Natasha Scott, picked him up near Pleasant Avenue.
Scott said Monday that she had picked Dodds up at his probation office, and they were coming up Wood Street when they saw Spiva running and Walker running behind him, firing. As they stopped, she said, Walker got into a maroon Camry with dark windows and drove away.
The rumor is that the two "had words" before the incident, she said, adding that Walker hangs out often in the area.
Donelson sees a more sinister motive, pointing back to Melton's close relationship with Walker, even saying that he believes the mayor could be behind Walker's action. "This guy's done something he has no business doing," said Donelson, who says he is staying out of trouble since he left federal prison on a weapons charge. "I really believe Frank put him up to it. ... He shot that boy for nothing."
Both Donelson and Scott complained that police did little on the case even though witnesses were pointing to Walker—and had not sent a detective out to interview witnesses as of Monday. Spiva said detectives had finally shown up Monday to interview him, and they have him under guard. Police had issued no arrest warrant as of Monday night, and Spiva said that he will sign an affidavit against Walker.
On Friday afternoon, shortly after the shooting, Melton told WAPT that Christopher Walker wasn't involved in any shooting and echoed his 2006 warning that "Batman," as he calls Donelson, is out to get Walker.
Walker said Saturday morning, however, that Melton had not returned any of his calls—and blamed Melton for putting him in harm's way now by trying to get him to testify against the alleged Wood Street Players in 2006. "That man's started all this," he said in a call to the JFP.
A Paranoid Web
Whatever is true about the Spiva shooting, Walker, 23, predicted a gun battle between him and Wood Street men in a longer interview with the Jackson Free Press about his own rough-and-criminal past and his frustrations with Melton. The mayor, he says, has gone from being his mentor and protector to a man he says won't return his calls or give him help now that he is out of jail on a federal drug charge. Walker, who was on probation in 2006 for a drug charge, returned to prison last year after failing multiple drug tests during the time Melton was presenting him to the world as a star witness in a murder trial.
When he talks about his past of drug dealing—which he first did, he said to put himself through school—Walker doesn't shy away from describing the horrors of his chosen profession.
"I worked for my money, although I did it the wrong way," he said last month. He had a 3.2 grade-point average when he left Lanier, and likes to use detailed chess analogies to explain what he thinks is happening all around him.
Walker believes that members of the "Wood Street Players" are targeting him because Melton—when he was director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics—"used" him, as Walker puts it, to try to send members of the alleged crime group to prison for cold murder cases. He said he believes Melton went after the Wood Street men in order to get publicity.
Melton tried to present Walker as his star witness in the murder trial of "Batman" Donelson, his brother Terrell Donelson and brother James Benton, who were accused of killing Aaron Crockett in 2000. They were acquitted after District Attorney Faye Peterson withdrew Walker as a witness, saying he had lied to the grand jury about being there when Albert Donelson supposedly called his brother from jail, ordering a hit on Crockett.
Walker now admits that he did not actually witness Terrell Donelson taking that call from his brother even though Melton desperately wanted him to testify to that scenario last year.
Peterson also provided Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter with a sheath of documents filed by defense attorneys showing that Melton had been very generous with Walker—renting him an apartment, giving him a Frank E. Melton credit card to use at will, allowing him to handle weapons at his home and giving him cash as requested during the year or so leading up to the April 2006 trial.
Because he cannot leave Jackson under terms of his probation, Walker said he believes one of the "Wood Street Players"—whom he says recruited him to sell drugs while he was at Rowan Middle School—is likely to kill him because Melton made him so public after bringing him in while at MBN and then befriending him in such a public way. At the time, Walker says, he trusted Melton to look after his safety.
In interviews in April 2006, Melton said he had to protect Walker because the state does not offer witness protection, even though some people were worried about him "tampering" with a trial.
Melton defended his actions passionately then in interviews, saying that he did what he had to do to "protect" Walker because Mississippi doesn't provide a witness protection program.
"Under no circumstances could I leave him out there to be killed," Melton told the JFP, adding: "Dern right. I did rent him an apartment, give him a credit card, (and) gave him money as recently as yesterday."
This was days after Melton had introduced Walker to the Jackson Free Press at his home on April 2, 2006, on the eve of the Donelson-Benton murder trial, saying, "Now, Donna, I want you to talk to Chris. He's a good kid." At the time, Walker says now, he was not living in Melton's home, but had free rein to come and go.
That night, he believes, Melton had asked him to come over to show him off to the JFP. Benton defense attorney Robert S. Smith was there, and said that Melton had arranged a meeting between him and Walker because the young man was about to testify against his client Benton.
By the next Sunday, April 8, the men were acquitted, and Melton led media on a "manhunt" for the same young man who had been coming and going from his home, saying that he needed to arrest him for being an accessory to an earlier shooting. By the next day, Melton had Walker tucked into the Jefferson Davis County Jail for the evening—but he was soon out and, in fact, hanging out again on Melton's sofa when the Jackson Free Press went to Melton's home for an interview on Good Friday.
Walker says now that Melton was angry at him because he didn't want to testify about something he did not actually witness and "kidnapped" him and took him to another county.
For his part, Donelson said he is trying to go straight and that he is safe inside his mama's house whenever his probation officer comes calling. And he's suspicious that it is taking so long for JPD to respond to the Spiva shooting.
"If they say I, Albert Donelson aka Batman, shot somebody three times in the back, how long do you think it'd be before they picked me up?" he asked Monday.
Melton has changed his number to an unlisted number and could not be reached for comment Monday night.
If you have further information to add to this story, please call Donna Ladd at 601.362.6121 ext. 5, or e-mail [e-mail missing].
Clarification: Christopher Walker was on probation for a weapons charge in 2006, but had a earlier non-adjudicated cocaine possession on his record. Probation was revoked after he failed drug tests last year. See this earlier story for explanation.
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