HATTIESBURG -- Investigators said Monday night they
still were piecing together what motivated a man to open fire at a
Hattiesburg restaurant on Monday afternoon, wounding five customers and
employees.“We don’t have anything that we can release right now,” Hattiesburg Police Department spokesman Lt. Eric Proulx said.

Suspect
Scott Tyner, 44, of Hattiesburg, was apprehended by Hattiesburg Police
officers a short distance from the restaurant. Tyner lived nearby on
South 21st Avenue.


http://www.wlox.com/story/17314760/four-shot-at-hattiesburg-restaurant-suspect-in-custody?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=6903382

Gallery:5 wounded in shooting at Hattiesburg restaurant

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The shooting came suddenly, seemingly without provocation, for the
employees and patrons inside Cucos, a Mexican restaurant on a frontage
road facing U.S. 49.Proulx said the shooting happened a little before 3:30 p.m.

“There was no confrontation,” Proulx said. “There was no exchange of words.”

Emergency responders arrived on scene about 3:31 p.m. Five victims with
blood-spattered clothes were rushed out on stretchers and taken to
Forrest General Hospital. One victim, a middle-aged white male, appeared
to be spitting up blood.Tyner was booked in the Forrest County Jail on five counts of aggravated assault Monday night. Bond was not set.

Hattiesburg Police did not release any other information on Tyner, other than to
say Tyner was not a current employee of the restaurant.According
to the Hattiesburg American archives, Tyner was a member of the Forrest
County Democratic Executive Committee as late as 2006, an Iraq War
protester and an avid letter writer on political topics.But while
Tyner called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and
decried tax policies that favored the rich, he also opposed amnesty
policies for illegal immigrants.One letter he wrote in 2010
questioned the reasoning behind celebrating Cinco de Mayo because of the
large number of illegal Mexican immigrants in the United States.“Mexico doesn’t care for its people; it exports them,” he wrote.

Onlookers at the crime scene expressed shock at the violence that seemed to come out of the blue.

Brian Foxworth was among about a dozen folks who stood pressed against the
police tape in the Payless Rent to Own store parking next door to Cucos.Foxworth,
the Payless store manager, said he didn’t hear the shots, but hurried
out of his store as soon as he heard the emergency responders arrive.While
he said he’s seen police come to Cucos twice before in his five years
at Payless, he said he never expected to see the business next door
crawling with police and ambulances.“I don’t know what to say about it,” he said. “I’m just stunned by the whole situation.”