Cops say gunman opened fire one month after pretrial release (2024)

DECATUR — Police say Chauntel J. Drake had been released from custody for just a month on pretrial release for a gun offense when he tried to shoot a victim to death in a drug deal gone wrong.

Drake was found and re-arrested April 10 and is now being held in the Macon County Jail after Judge Lindsey Shelton ruled he was now too dangerous and too much of a flight risk to be released again.

The 18-year-old defendant appeared in court April 24 where he pleaded not guilty to a new charge of attempted murder.

An arrest warrant filed by Detective Bryan Kaylor with the Decatur Police Department said the 21-year-old victim had arranged to meet Drake on the afternoon of Dec. 7 in the 1600 block of North Edward Street to purchase cannabis.

Several witnesses had traveled with the victim and one of them, a 21-year-old woman, had seen the two men together as they walked toward the back of a house at that address. Kaylor said the witness then described watching a struggle break out between them before Drake “displayed a firearm and shot (the victim) during the altercation.”

Patrol officers had responded to 911 reports of an injured person and found the victim “actively bleeding from gunshot wounds to his right upper chest and left leg.”

Kaylor said police initially only had the shooter identified by his Facebook name “Hothead Telly” which officers soon worked out was Drake; the witnesses also later picked him out of a photo line-up.

The earlier charge against Drake dates to the evening of Nov. 6 when police accuse the defendant of being at the wheel of a stolen vehicle and fleeing from a traffic stop. He later bailed out and fled on foot but a sworn affidavit said he was chased down to a house in the 1000 block of East Wood Street and arrested.

A police dog was called in and sniffed out a loaded semi-automatic firearm that Drake is accused of dumping as he fled. He had appeared in court Nov. 7 on a charge of the aggravated unlawful possession of a weapon and had been released from custody that day. One of the conditions of his pretrial release had barred him from “possessing a firearm or other dangerous weapon.”

Drake is due back in court May 8 for a hearing on this charge and the new attempted murder charge.