Arrest made in Prestonsburg shooting incident

PRESTONSBURG, Ky. (WYMT) - Police made an arrest Wednesday in connection to a Friday shooting incident in the Prestonsburg community.

Investigators with the Prestonsburg Police Department shared information about the shooting Tuesday, saying they were in the search for an unnamed teenager. By Wednesday, they said, the juvenile was in custody and taken to the Breathitt County Regional Juvenile Detention Center.

Officers say they originally discovered the people responsible for the shooting were teenagers in a newer model gray Toyota Tacoma.

“As we attempted to locate the suspected driver, Westin Harris, of Allen, who after he was located was determined to be 19 years old, Mr. Harris came forward and identified himself as the operator of the vehicle,” the department shared in a news release.

The report said Harris identified the shooter as a 17-year-old, unnamed boy.

“Harris was completely cooperative and denied knowing what the juvenile was going to do until after the crime was committed,” the report said. “Immediately after the identification of the shooter, paperwork was started with Floyd County Attorney Keith Bartley’s Office to formally charge that male with four felony counts of Wanton Endangerment in the 1st Degree and four felony counts of Criminal Mischief in the 1st Degree.”

The Floyd County Attorney’s Office plans to seek a ruling to charge the juvenile as an adult, at which point investigators say the name of the shooter will be released.

“This case will be turned over to Floyd County Commonwealth’s Attorney A. Brent Turner for presentation to the Floyd County Grand Jury to determine the validity of the charges and rather or not parties other than the known shooter should be charged,” the news release said. “That decision rests with the grand jury alone.”

Police Chief Ross Shurtleff told WYMT the department has tried to be as transparent as possible throughout the incident. But the ages of those involved and the scattered details originally trickling in made things tricky.

“It is important to note that we intended to alert the public to the investigation and the criminal intent of the perpetrators, which our investigation has concluded there is no evidence that their intent was to do physical harm to motorists, but to do property damage to passing vehicles,” the news release said. “That known criminal intent did not stifle the seriousness of the offence or our investigative efforts to locate the shooter.”

Though the department shared the intent of the shooting was not harm, Shurtleff told WYMT there was never any intention of discrediting the actions.

“If our description of the suspect’s motive for the crimes took away from the level of severity or seriousness that this agency gave publicly, that was not the intent,” the news release shared. “And at no time did this Agency or its Command Staff think that the actual offense was anything less than egregious. Our desire was only to relay the mindset of the offenders as the investigation indicated and the knowledge that the threat to public safety had left the area.”

See the full news release here.