‘Completely senseless.’ Phenix City truck shop owner recalls shootout that wounded two
Paul Thrasher still puzzles over the events leading to a gunfight that left two men wounded last week outside his Phenix City truck repair shop.
It began around 8:30 a.m. April 13 with a dispute over $450, the price of work Thrasher’s Elite Heavy Duty Truck Service performed on an independent trucker’s tractor-trailer rig, he said. It escalated to a confrontation that led to the trucker’s arrest for disorderly conduct.
It ended around 6 p.m. when the disgruntled customer and another man returned to open fire on Thrasher’s 1305 14th Street shop, according to Phenix City police.
Thrasher said the suspects likely fired 12 shots or more at him and three workers who were standing outside by his Toyota Tundra pickup truck, and prosecutors have confirmed that.
No one was hit in that barrage as Thrasher and his crew took cover.
One of his workers, a 34-year-old Army combat veteran, drew a handgun as he circled behind another truck and popped up on the other side, aiming and firing three shots with a Taurus 9-millimeter, Thrasher said.
Two of the three shots hit the suspects in the head, authorities said. The two men fled east on 14th Street before they were rushed to Piedmont Columbus Regional for treatment.
Now each is charged with attempted murder, and each is jailed on bonds totaling $240,000, about 500 times the $450 repair bill that ignited the conflict.
The suspects
Phenix City police identified the suspects as Andrew McDaniel, 58, and Justin Lott, 34, now held in the Russell County jail on bonds that for both come to $480,000.
Thrasher and his workers refer to McDaniel and Lott as father and son. Authorities have said Lott is McDaniel’s stepson.
After being treated for their wounds, they were booked into the Muscogee County Jail in Columbus on April 14, according to jail records.
Each was extradited Friday to Russell County, where they had an initial hearing before District Court Judge Zack Collins, who set the bonds on the four counts of attempted murder each faces, said Russell County Chief Assistant District Attorney Rick Chancey.
A camera on the repair shop recorded the gunfire from the Kia, but not who shot back, Chancey said. Investigators have collected multiple shell casings from the scene, and will trace those back to the guns, he said.
The bill
Thrasher opened the shop a couple of months ago, and this week still was grading the lot.
After the shootout, no one works there alone now, he said, though he and his workers all have guns they are licensed to carry concealed.
“We’ve been fixing this place up, getting it ready,” he said of the grading. “If two of us are working on the machines, another one of us is watching. There’s always somebody watching.”
They anticipate retaliation, and that’s why Thrasher said he won’t name the worker who shot McDaniel and Lott.
Thrasher and a coworker said it seemed McDaniel came looking for a fight that morning, incensed by the cost of new flooring for his trailer and other work the shop had done.
“He was just fussing about everything,” Thrasher said. “We tried to make him happy.... His original bill was $450. I knocked $90 off of it, and took it down to $360. Well, then he turned around and was still fussing.”
McDaniel tried to take the truck without paying, Thrasher said.
“We told him, ‘Either you pay for the truck or you don’t get the truck,’ so he made a phone call to the police, and said he would get his truck,” the owner recalled. “So the police come, and told him, ‘Look, it’s a civil matter. Either you pay for the truck, or he doesn’t have to release it to you.’”
McDaniel and Lott left in a white Kia to get the money, then came back and paid while police waited at the shop, Thrasher said.
But McDaniel continued to complain, and a brief struggle followed when he grabbed at Thrasher, the owner said.
“We got into a little scuffle in the shop,” he said. “The police had to come back in the shop and remove him out of the shop. At that point in time, his son turned around and looked at one of my coworkers and said, ‘I’ll be back today to get you.’ We didn’t think too much about it, because, you know, people run their mouths.”
That’s when police first arrested McDaniel, who later was released.
Around noon, McDaniel’s wife came by with a driver to retrieve the tractor-trailer, Thrasher said, and he and his crew thought the conflict was over.
The shootout
Around 5:45 p.m., Thrasher and his workers stood by Thrasher’s pickup, talking things over.
“We’re standing around the back of my pickup truck, just talking about everything that had happened that day,” he said. Then he saw the white Kia stop out in the street, in front the shop.
“I said, ‘Hey, that’s the same car,’” Thrasher remembered. “I seen the guy get out of the car, and lean over the car with a gun. I said, ‘Hey! He’s got a gun!’ And about that time he started firing at us, and we all scrambled and got behind our vehicles.”
Lott had stopped in the street’s right, eastbound lane, got out of the driver’s seat, and fired over the car’s roof, Thrasher said.
Thrasher and his workers said McDaniel also fired at them, from the Kia’s front passenger seat.
Chancey, the prosecutor, said he could not confirm from the security camera footage whether McDaniel also shot at the shop. Phenix City police so far have said only Lott fired at those outside.
Thrasher’s security camera video does show that as he and his crew took cover, one worker pulled a handgun and tried to shoot back, but his pistol jammed.
That’s when the Army veteran, deployed to special operations in Iraq 2009-10, shot back, Thrasher said: “He turned around and made his way to a safe point and returned fire.”
The police later measured the distance, he said: “They told us that he had shot 58 yards.... He shot three times, and all three shots hit the car, but two of them connected with both suspects in the car, both head shots, so both are extremely lucky to be alive.”
The suspects fled, before police found the Kia about a mile away, at the foot of the 13th Street bridge leading into Columbus.
“We didn’t even know they were hit until later on, when we got the information,” said Thrasher, who on Tuesday still was pondering how an argument over a few hundred dollars led to this.
“All this was over just a $360 bill,” he said. “Just completely senseless.”
This story was originally published April 20, 2022 at 11:35 AM.