Crime spree in Spalding County ends after shooting, 2 arrested
Leon McCampbell. (Credit: Spalding County Sheriff's Office)
SPALDING COUNTY, Ga. - After a weekend crime spree in Spalding County escalated into gunfire, two young males were arrested and now face felony charges.
Authorities arrested 18-year-old Leon McCampbell and a 16-year-old boy who fled the scene after one of them shot at a homeowner who caught them breaking into a car.
What we know:
The investigation began when Spalding County deputies answered an emergency call at 5:30 a.m. Law enforcement officials determined that a homeowner went outside to investigate a noise and caught suspects breaking into a vehicle at 100 block of Westridge Drive. During the confrontation, one of the suspects drew a handgun and fired three shots at the homeowner before fleeing the scene in a stolen vehicle.
Responding shift supervisors immediately summoned criminal investigators, where they calculated a total of eight vehicle break-ins, two auto thefts, and one aggravated assault from that single night. Shortly thereafter, patrol officers discovered the suspects' getaway vehicle abandoned in the Wills Walk subdivision near Vineyard Road.
Deputies and investigators successfully tracked the moving suspects by monitoring the signal of an electronic device stolen from one of the targeted vehicles. The tracking operation led authorities to the 1000 block of Vineyard Road, aided by a 911 call from a resident who reported suspicious teenagers walking through the neighborhood.
Deputies detained McCampbell and the 16-year-old, matching their descriptions to the clothing and backpack noted in the initial Westridge drive report. A subsequent search of the backpack uncovered a pistol that had been reported stolen from a vehicle earlier that night.
Within a 24-hour window, investigators linked the pair to a broader string of entering autos across the county from the prior week.
What's next:
McCampbell faces charges of one count of aggravated assault, four counts of theft by taking a motor vehicle, eighteen counts of entering an auto, and one count of possessing a firearm during the commission of a crime, and he remains held at the Spalding County Jail.
The juvenile accomplice faces identical auto theft, entering auto, and firearm charges, and is detained at the Martha Glaze Juvenile Facility in Clayton County.
What we don't know:
The Spalding County Sheriff's Office has not disclosed whether the homeowner sustained any injuries during the three-shot exchange.
What they're saying:
Spalding County Sheriff Darrell Dix issued a sharp rebuke of the suspects' motivations following the arrests, noting that the outcome could have been far worse for the teenagers.
"These suspects were stealing because they wanted stuff without paying for it. It's that simple," Dix said. "They are blessed that they didn't run across an armed homeowner who shot back."
The Source: The information in this article was gathered from a press release by the Spalding County Sheriff's Office.