The Metro Nashville Police Department charged 29-year-old Christopher Crowley Thursday afternoon, alleging he shot and killed a homeless man in downtown Nashville hours earlier.
Police charged Crowley with criminal homicide in the killing of Robert Mitchell, 41, that happened just around 3 a.m. across the street from police headquarters at Third Avenue North and James Robertson Parkway.
According to police, security cameras at the headquarters captured footage of a car driving the wrong way on James Robertson Parkway. The individual got out of the car for a few seconds, got back in and sped off. A witness told police he heard a gun shot around the same time.
Security tapes revealed a license plate number of the car and police tracked it back to Crowley. MNPD officers took him into custody at 5 a.m. outside his Brandywine Apartments home off of Edmonson Pike in South Nashville.
MNPD detectives are also checking to see if Crowley may be involved in other unsolved shootings downtown [1], including the 2009 murder of Edward Matthews on a downtown bench [2].
Police are asking people with information about Crowley to call MNPD’s Homicide/Cold Case Unit at 862-7329.
Crowley was held in jail on a $250,000 bond.
Links:
[1] http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/cold-case-detectives-say-homeless-attacks-may-be-related
[2] http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/update-police-id-homeless-found-murdered-downtown