Man jailed after Tuskegee University shooting says he fired his gun, but denies shooting at anyone

A man accused of having a machine gun at Tuskegee University during a hail of gunfire that left one man dead and at least 16 others hurt told a federal agent that he fired his weapon during the shooting, but denied aiming at anyone.

The new details are contained in a newly unsealed federal complaint that describes how one officer ran toward the gunfire. That officer found a dead body, and then saw Jaquez Myrick with a Glock pistol, the complaint states.

Myrick was later questioned by state and federal agents, who asked him whether he discharged his firearm during the shooting.

“Myrick then confessed to discharging the Glock but denied shooting at anyone,” a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who took part in the interview, wrote in the complaint.

Myrick, 25, of Montgomery, is accused of having a weapon with a machine gun conversion device and faces a federal charge of possession of a machine gun. The complaint does not accuse him of shooting anyone. No attorneys who could speak on Myrick's behalf are listed in the federal court documents, and it was unclear from jail records whether he has one.

The complaint also details the chaotic scene and how Myrick was apprehended.

A Tuskegee police officer, one of the first to respond to reports of gunshots on the campus, heard the gunfire immediately but wasn’t able to drive his patrol car through a parking lot because it was so jammed with people and cars, according to the court records.

Officer Alan Ashley then left his car and ran toward the gunfire, soon finding a man dead from a gunshot wound, according to the complaint. Ashley then saw Myrick, armed with a Glock pistol, and took him into custody, the complaint states.

The city officer also gave the gun to the special agent who wrote the complaint.

“During a field examination, I found the pistol to function as a machine gun,” the federal agent wrote.

Myrick told the agents he had come from his home in Montgomery to the Tuskegee campus “looking for a party” and was with some friends when the shooting started.

He said he purchased the Glock from a pawn shop in Tampa, Florida, and then purchased a machine gun conversion device from a seller he met through the online site Discord, the complaint states. Myrick said he had the package delivered to a vacant residence, and installed the device on his pistol.

The shooting came as the school's 100th homecoming week was winding down. A dozen of the victims were hit by gunfire, with the others injured as they tried to escape the chaotic scene, authorities said. Many of the injured were students.

The man killed was identified as 18-year-old La’Tavion Johnson, of Troy, Alabama, who was not a student, the local coroner said.

The FBI joined the investigation and said it was seeking tips from the public, as well as any video witnesses might have. It set up a site online for people to upload video.

The shooting is the latest case in which a “machine gun conversion device” was found, something law officers around the nation have expressed grave concerns about. The proliferation of these types of weapons is made possible by small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online.

Guns with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four dead at a Sweet Sixteen party in Alabama last year and another that left six people dead at a bar district in Sacramento, California.

“It takes two or three seconds to put in some of these devices into a firearm to make that firearm into a machine gun instantly,” Steve Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said in AP’s report on the weapons earlier this year.

The shooting left the entire university community shaken, said Amare’ Hardee, a senior from Tallahassee, Florida, who is president of the student government association.

“This senseless act of violence has touched each of us, whether directly or indirectly,” he said at the school’s homecoming convocation Sunday morning.

Sunday’s shooting comes just over a year after four people were injured in a shooting at a Tuskegee University student housing complex. Two visitors to the campus were shot and two students were hurt while trying to leave the scene of what campus officials described as an “unauthorized party” in September 2023, the Montgomery Advertiser reported.

About 3,000 students are enrolled at the university about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Alabama’s capital city of Montgomery.

The university was the first historically Black college to be designated a Registered National Landmark in 1966. It was also designated a National Historic Site in 1974, according to the school’s website.