A woman accused of fatally shooting her ex-girlfriend’s stepfather during an argument at a DeKalb County apartment complex spent two weeks on the run before being captured this week in Texas, police said.
Zarmayah Tyson, 26, was arrested Wednesday in the Nov. 9 shooting of Reginald McDonald, DeKalb police spokesman Lt. Shane Smith said. The 44-year-old was shot in the 2200 block of Flat Shoals Road while trying to break up a fight between Tyson and her ex-girlfriend, who police said was McDonald’s stepdaughter.
Officers were called to the scene just before 11:30 a.m. and found McDonald wounded, authorities said. He was taken to the hospital, but died from his injuries.
“The victim is the ex-girlfriend’s stepfather, and he attempted to de-escalate the argument when the suspect produced a handgun and shot the victim,” DeKalb police said in a statement.
McDonald’s wife, Arista Pittman, told Channel 2 Action News that her husband went to the Columbia Mill Apartments to change a tire for a young woman. While the two weren’t technically related, Pittman said the woman was like a stepdaughter to him from a previous relationship.
“There’s nothing bad to say about him,” Pittman said of her husband. “He was loving and devoted. He loved his family. He loved his kids. He would do anything for anybody.”
Witnesses told investigators that Tyson arrived at the complex shortly after McDonald and an argument ensued. When he went back to changing the tire, he was shot and killed. Authorities said Tyson fled the scene and had been on the run until Wednesday, when she was arrested in Texas on a murder charge.
McDonald’s grieving wife called the shooting senseless. She is left to care for the couple’s 2-year-old son.
“He had nothing to do with their situation,” Pittman told Channel 2. “He just came over there to give the girl a helping hand, and because of that, his life was taken.”
Tyson had not been booked into the DeKalb County jail as of Friday afternoon, according to online records.
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