LITTLE ROCK — A 23-year-old Memphis man is facing felony charges after police said he fired a single shot toward a group of Henderson State University students Wednesday afternoon.
The shooting was prompted by a dispute over $100, police said Thursday.
Brandon C. Yarbrough was being held Thursday at the Clark County jail on charges of discharging a firearm from a vehicle and possession a firearm on school property.
No one was struck when police said Yarbrough fired the shot from a car parked in a lot that belongs to nearby Ouachita Baptist University. The schools sit next to each other in Arkadelphia.
Yarbrough is not a student at either school and neither are the two women who police questioned after the shooting.
He went to the campus to help Elizabeth Newsome, 21, of Conway get the money from her ex-boyfriend, Henderson student Antonio Jones, 20, police said Thursday.
"She drove all the way from Little Rock to get this money," Arkadelphia Police Sgt. Harley Hillery said. Neither Newsome nor her friend Ashley White, 19, of Little Rock were charged in the case.
Yarbrough told police he didn't intend to harm anyone and fired only a warning shot at the ground, Hillery said.
The shot was fired about 3:30 p.m., and minutes later police stopped a car carrying Yarbrough and the two women on Interstate 30. Authorities said they found a handgun during that traffic stop.
Both universities used e-mail alert systems to notify the campuses' communities about the shooting but didn't implement emergency-response systems because a suspect was quickly apprehended and there appeared to be no further threat of violence, school officials said.
Both universities have procedures to lock down the campuses and notify students, and faculty and staff members of an emergency.
Classes resumed Thursday. OBU administrators have asked campus security officers to beef of their presence for several days.
Authorities called the shooting an isolated incident that like other recent campus shootings targeted a specific person.
"Unfortunately, this situation was very similar to the UCA incident in that off-campus individuals came near our campus to commit this act," Henderson President Charles Welch wrote in a message on the school's Web site, referring to the slaying of two University of Central Arkansas students last month.
"We were very fortunate that no one was injured and our police forces were able to act so quickly to determine the extent of the incident, locate the suspects and resolve the situation within just a few minutes."
A judge had not set bail for Yarbrough on Thursday.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 11/21/2008