Bloodied man ran, begged for help after shooting near Summerville

When the man stepped to her open doorway Sunday night, Billie Ellison and her children first thought he was a Halloween prankster.

What appeared to be blood dripped from the man’s head. His white shirt was splashed with red.

“Those boys are trying to shoot me,” Ellison, 36, recalled him saying as he stood outside her mobile home near Summerville.

But the sight that interrupted the Ellisons’ dinner and Halloween movie — “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” on ABC Family — was the real thing.

Travis Jamal Fults, 20, suffered gunshot wounds, a cut on his head and puncture wounds to his chest during a confrontation with three men around 8 p.m. at 110 Wyatt Lane.

Fults scrambled to neighboring homes in the Wood Oak Mobile Home Park, begging for safe harbor and first aid from perplexed residents. Ellison called 911 after she inspected the man’s bloodied head and shirt.

Fults eventually found shelter in the home of a neighbor who waved him over.

“It was close to Halloween, so I didn’t know what to think of the situation,” Ellison said Monday. “I didn’t know if someone was coming after him.”

Zaquann Hampton, 18, of Boonehill Road and 17-year-old Rashawn Brown, a resident of the home where the shooting occurred, are wanted on charges of attempted murder. A third suspect remains unidentified.

Lt. Tony Phinney of the Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office said Fults likely had been involved in a scuffle with the men and that his injuries were not life-threatening. He was released after treatment at Medical University Hospital.

Fults told the Sheriff’s Office that he was walking into a friend’s Wyatt Lane home when the three men inside opened fire with their pistols.

Investigators were trying to determine whether another crime was involved. Deputies placed bags on Fults’ hands to preserve possible evidence.

Fults’ criminal history shows an arrest in June on charges of trafficking cocaine, distribution of cocaine base and possession of controlled substances.

Hampton was on probation for unlawfully carrying a pistol.

Deputies have fielded “rumors of narcotics activity” in the community, which is frequently patrolled, sheriff’s Maj. John Garrison said. But they have conducted no recent drug busts, and Garrison said “it’s just one of our areas of concern” in the county.

But for resident Patricia Cannon-Fisher, the shooting didn’t come as a surprise.

The 48-year-old saw Fults leaving a trail of blood as he ran from home to home. A neighbor of Cannon-Fisher’s who works as a veterinarian technician chased after him, she said, and volunteered an old sweater to plug his bleeding.

Deputies later found Fults lying on the couch of a woman’s home on Linda Lane. He was holding a shirt to his head.

Cannon-Fisher said that she has called deputies three times about people smoking marijuana in plain view.

“There’s a lot going on here,” she said. “It seems to be a magnet for bad things.”

Reach Andrew Knapp at 937-5414