The Times-Journal

A motion was filed to change the venue in the first trial of the Broad Street shootout by Robert Treese on Monday, defense attorney for John Jones Jr., the first of the defendants to be tried in the case.

Michael Jackson, district attorney for Dallas County, said the motion was filed in response to an article printed in the Sunday edition of The Times-Journal.

Jackson said Treese believed the article might influence the jury negatively against his client.

Judge Tommy Jones, who decided to hold off the case until Wednesday to allow for a death in the family of the lead investigator in the case, won’t rule on the motion until then, according to the district attorney’s office.

Jackson said the delay won’t hurt the case.

“It just got put off for a couple of days,” he said.

Jones is accused of shooting a Selma youth in the May 2004 Broad Street shooting. He’s also charged with two counts of shooting into an occupied dwelling and one count of shooting into an occupied vehicle.

Jones was one of five suspects charged in the shooting and the only suspect charged with first-degree assault.

Jones is accused of shooting from a moving vehicle, a gold Caprice, into another vehicle, a white Caprice. Passengers in the white Caprice allegedly fired back. The incident occurred on a Wednesday at about 4 p.m. on Broad Street, between Water Avenue and Alabama Avenue.

Bullets from the shooting hit the Pilcher-McBryde drugstore and The Selma Times-Journal office building.

Jones was one of the last suspects arrested in the incident, when he was shot in the back of the head in August of the same year. Tyrone Stallworth, the brother of a suspect in the Broad Street shootout, was accused of assaulting Jones in the incident.

Attempts to contact defense attorney Robert Treese were unsuccessful as of press time.