Man indicted quietly in Wilmington shooting of 6-year-old

Show Caption Hide Caption Resident reacts to shooting of 6-year-old boy Carmen Hall, who lives on the block where a 6-year-old boy was shot in the head, heard the gunfire at the same time she expected her son home from school. Hall and others are still trying to make sense of the shooting.

One shooting. Two suspects arrested. Two different approaches to publicizing the charges.

Chelsea Outlaw, 41, was charged with attempted murder on June 8, days after the shooting of a 6-year-old boy caught in the crossfire on a Wilmington street. The Mayor's Office announced the arrest in a press release June 9, but four days later, Outlaw was released and the charges were dropped based on further investigation.

Unbeknownst to the public, the day before Outlaw's release, Michael D. Pritchett, 32, was indicted by a Superior Court grand jury on attempted murder charges in the same case. Yet there was no press release about Pritchett.

City officials, who claimed Wednesday to not know of Pritchett's indictment, did not explain why the two arrests were handled differently.

"It is strange they would put out a press release for one person and not the other," said Outlaw's defense attorney, Kathryn van Amerongen.

A spokesman for the Delaware Department of Justice said state prosecutors do not announce indictments "in general."

"The indictments are public and available from the courthouse in each county," Carl Kanefsky said.

STORY: Did Wilmington rush to announce arrest in 6-year-old boy's shooting?

The silence on Pritchett has left some confused and concerned about the way the case is being presented to the public.

"It concerns me because of the secret nature or the secret ways things seem to be being done," the Rev. Derrick "Pastor D" Johnson said, adding that Pritchett's family said he was somewhere else during the afternoon shooting along the 700 block of E. Sixth St.

In early June, 6-year-old Jashawn Banner was struck in the face by gunfire. He was last reported to be in critical condition at Nemours/A.I. duPont Hospital for Children.

Outlaw's charges were dropped on June 13 – the same day van Amerongen tried to secure video showing Outlaw and his child were riding DART buses and doing errands when the shooting occurred on the city's East Side.

Neither Wilmington police nor state prosecutors would elaborate on whether this video footage was what led them to drop the charges against Outlaw.

Outlaw's release occurred more than 24 hours after Pritchett had been indicted on June 12.

Johnson said he would like to know why law enforcement believes Pritchett was involved in the shooting, especially because Pritchett does not fit a witness' description of the shooter.

According to court records, an unnamed witness came forward and described the shooter as a brown-skinned male with golden hair and freckles.

Pritchett's indictment is not clear whether he is accused of being a shooter or a co-conspirator who played another role.

"If this person that they have now charged is, in fact, not the shooter, then once again we have failed a 6-year-old boy and his family," Johnson said.

According to court records, the shooter fired a gun from the passenger side of the vehicle. Prichett, who was arrested on unrelated charges the day after the shooting, was indicted under a Rule 9 warrant and his case does not have a police affidavit of probable cause that can explain why he became a suspect.

In addition to the two counts of first-degree attempted murder, Pritchett faces two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment, second-degree assault, conspiracy and several weapons charges.

On June 6, the boy was being driven to his father's house by his mother when they entered the 700 block of E. Sixth St. The SUV stopped so a pedestrian could cross the street near East Sixth and Spruce streets.

That's when a white pickup truck, which had been southbound on Spruce Street, pulled in front of the SUV on East Sixth Street and its passenger leaned out a window and began firing at the pedestrian (this was the second time that day the pedestrian had been shot at, according to court records).

As the pickup truck's passenger fired at the pedestrian, several of the bullets struck the SUV and hit the 6-year-old once in the face.

Initially, police said the boy's mother had been shot, but investigators later said the injury to her left arm was caused by shattered glass.

Contact Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299, eparra@delawareonline.com or Twitter @eparra3.