A woman is fighting for her life in a hospital after a man shot her in a car parked at Mount Vernon Plaza in Hybla Valley on Saturday (Aug. 12).
Fairfax County police officers were called to the shopping center in the 7700 block of Richmond Highway at 3:49 p.m. that day in response to the reported shooting.
Upon arriving, the officers found an adult woman with a gunshot wound to the upper body, along with three other people at the scene, including a man suspected of firing the weapon and an infant in the car, according to the Fairfax County Police Department.
Identified as 29-year-old Front Royal resident Montez Damone-Faggins, the man was arrested and charged with malicious wounding and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, the FCPD said in a news release yesterday (Sunday).
Police also arrested Kayla Thornton, 28, of Woodbridge, who was inside the car and has “outstanding warrants from another jurisdiction,” the department said.
“A credit to the patrol’s response, they got here very quickly,” FCPD Lt. James Curry told media on Saturday. “They took everyone into custody, and then, the priority turns into saving lives, and that’s what they did. Hopefully, due to their quick action, we get a positive outcome with our victim here.”
The woman, who hasn’t been publicly identified yet, remains hospitalized with potentially life-threatening injuries, police say.
According to the FCPD, detectives believe all of the people involved know each other and were inside the car — a white sedan parked outside the seafood restaurant Skrimp Shack — when Damone-Faggins shot the woman.
The woman’s infant child wasn’t harmed in the shooting and has since been “reunited with another family member,” the FCPD says.
“The most important thing is that child is safe,” Curry said.
Damone-Faggins is in custody at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, where he’s being held on no bond, while Thornton is being held on a secured bond. The FCPD didn’t specify whether Thornton is in custody in Fairfax County or in another jurisdiction.