A Bassfield man is dead from an apparent Monday night shooting on Hillcrest Drive behind Lowe’s Home Improvement in Hattiesburg.
Lamar County Sheriff Danny Rigel said deputies received a call at about 7:28 p.m. Monday of a vehicle wreck in a parking lot of an apartment complex on Hillcrest Drive. Upon arriving, police spoke with the owner of a vehicle in the parking lot of the complex, who said he heard gunshots and a crash.
“When he got outside, a vehicle had crashed into his vehicle, and he could tell it was a blue car that left blue paint on his vehicle and left the scene,” Rigel said.
Shortly after that, Lamar County officers received a call from Hattiesburg Police Department regarding a blue Volkswagen Jetta in the parking lot of Forrest General Hospital. A 20-year-old man with a gunshot wound to the head was inside the vehicle. The man, who Lamar County coroner Blake Matherne identified as Montrell Baker, died shortly after being brought inside the hospital.
“We don’t think he drove himself to the hospital; we think somebody else drove him to the hospital and just left him in the parking lot,” Rigel said. “So we’re looking to see who it was that drove him to the parking lot. But we think he was shot in the parking lot of the apartment complex and driven to the hospital by another subject, who we’re trying to identify now.”
Anyone with information regarding the incident is asked to call the Lamar County Sheriff’s Department at (601) 794-1005 or Metro Crime Stoppers at (601) 582-7867.
