After interviewing witnesses and piecing together evidence over the last week, investigators with the Oakwood Police Department have now charged a business owner in connection with an altercation that happened at a store on Sept. 28.
Lt. Todd Templeton said Yo Han Choi, the owner of the Boost Mobile franchise at College Square Shopping Center, was arrested Monday, Oct. 5 and charged with aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of certain crimes, battery and reckless conduct.
Two suspects had previously been charged in connection with the altercation at the business.
Templeton said the initial call to the police department came just before 4:45 p.m. on Sept. 28. Dispatchers said there was a disturbance and a possible gunman in the parking lot of the shopping center.
"As officers were responding to the area, they also received word that some of the involved subjects had fled the scene in a white Nissan Sentra," Templeton said. "A deputy [from the Hall County Sheriff's Office] who was in the area spotted that vehicle as it was attempting to flee and conducted a traffic stop on it."
Inside the vehicle, according to Templeton, were Raul Antonio Rios and Esmeralda Martinez-Valdez. Rios, the driver, told the deputy he had been shot.
"That turned out to be false," Templeton said, although Rios was bleeding from the head. That injury, officers later determined, happened in the parking lot outside the Boost Mobile store.
Meanwhile, Oakwood officers arrived at the store and talked with Choi and a female employee, who said Martinez-Valdez and Rios had assaulted them.
"Esmeralda Martinez-Valdez had been asked to vacate another Boost Mobile store [in Gainesville] the previous day due to unruly behavior against employees," Templeton said. "The employee who asked Esmeralda Martinez-Valdez to leave was the same employee working at the Oakwood store on the incident date."
When Martinez-Valdez saw the same employee who had asked her to leave the Gainesville store, she became angry and assaulted the employee. Choi intervened, but then Rios apparently assaulted him. Templeton said that's when Choi retrieved a handgun. Once Rios and Martinez-Valdez saw the gun, they left the store.
"The subsequent investigation revealed that the store owner pursued the individuals into the parking lot, attempting to grab and hold on to them and witnesses actually [saw] him strike Mr. Rios in the head with the firearm as Mr. Rios was attempting to flee," Templeton said.
At one point during the parking lot altercation, Choi's firearm went off.
"No one was injured as a result of the shot, but the gun was discharged in a busy parking lot outside," Templeton said.
Templeton said investigators interviewed a number of witnesses before making a determination that charges against the store owner were warranted.
