A Facebook friend request might have cracked a shooting investigation wide open.
Darelle Porter and his 12-year-old nephew were sitting on the porch of the Oak Groves when he says those bullets started flying from a passing Chrysler 300 Sunday afternoon. One of the bullets grazed him another hit the child.
“When it occurred, we weren’t really paying attention we just heard the gunshots,” said Porter.
Early in the investigation, police did not have any strong leads. That changed when Porter’s girlfriend -- who also witnessed the shooting -- got a Facebook friend request the next morning from a man she’d never met, but had a face she said she’d never forget.
“On his Facebook he has pictures of him in that exact same car, he has pictures of him holding firearms,” said said the child's aunt.
Brown says she contacted police who say they were already getting other tips about about the shooter, including one from the suspect’s own small child.
“His son goes to a daycare that my little cousin goes to, and [he] went to school and told everybody his father shot someone.”
Police had enough evidence to get a warrant for the arrest of 26-year-old Trenton Dennard, and with the help of the U.S. Marshals Service were able to track him down at a Mount Dora motel Tuesday night.
“There may have been a disagreement with a girl, it may have stemmed further than that. But to us it’s a shooting, it doesn’t matter, nobody deserves to be shot over a disagreement," said Major Steve Rockefeller, Leesburg police.
Both investigators and Brown say they aren’t exactly sure why Dennard sent the friend request, but they are just glad he did.
“I’m sure in his mind he wanted to know what was going on the progress in the case whether we were on his trail, that something was going to be posted on Facebook,” said Brown.
What was posted, was the good news that the child is expected to make a full recovery.