Teen arrested in Louisiana shooting got ride from scene from grandmother

A 17-year-old accused of murder in Thursday’s mass shooting at a Louisiana mall that left a high school senior dead while wounding five others got a ride away from the crime scene from his grandmother – and was arrested after investigators used surveillance video and license plate readers to track her car down, authorities allege.

There is no indication that Markel Lee’s grandmother knew what he was suspected of doing prior to his arrest, which evidently occurred after she told police that her grandson was in a surveillance image they showed her depicting someone seemingly aiming a pistol toward the shopping center food court where the shooting occurred.

A sworn police statement obtained by the Guardian spells out the circumstances of Lee’s arrest in connection with the deadly shooting at the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, a case that quickly gained national media attention.

Officials have said 17-year-old high school senior and bystander Martha Odom was struck in the chest and killed after the gunfire erupted at the Mall of Louisiana on Thursday afternoon. Five others – including two of Martha’s fellow seniors at Ascension Episcopal school who were at the mall for an unofficial “skip” day – were injured.

Baton Rouge police later recovered surveillance video showing two groups of young people approaching each other in the food court. The video depicted bystanders running away at that point, “as though responding to shots being fired”, police wrote in their affidavit.

One person in particular could be seen running towards the men’s bathroom while reaching an arm back in the direction of the food court. That person appeared to be aiming a gun at the center of the food court, before being seen on security video getting into a white, four-door Honda Accord with damage to its front bumper.

Police said they utilized cameras that read license plates to determine the car had been driven toward the Mall of Louisiana more than an hour before the mass shooting was reported at about 1.25pm. They then found the car at the registered address for the vehicle’s owner, Lee’s grandmother.

She told detectives that she had driven Lee to the mall that afternoon, then picked him up about six minutes after the shooting.

Shown a surveillance picture of a “subject [who] appeared to be pointing a … pistol toward the food court” at the time of the shooting, the grandmother confirmed “that it was her grandson, Markel Lee”, police wrote in their affidavit.

Officers obtained a warrant to arrest Lee on one count of first-degree murder, five counts of attempted first-degree murder and illegal use of weapons or dangerous instrumentalities. Police said he surrendered himself to their custody on Friday.