Contemporaneous Huntington police reporting identifies the victim as Justin Pettaway, a 29-year-old man, rather than Jason Pettaway. Pettaway was killed on June 1, 2016, during a shooting in the 400 block of 26th Street in the Highlawn neighborhood of Huntington, West Virginia. The violence unfolded during the early evening at a residence where, according to police, a domestic dispute escalated into an exchange of gunfire at the front door.
Officers responding to the scene found Pettaway dead from gunshot wounds.
Police said the confrontation involved Pettaway and Joseph Andrew Chapman. Investigators described what happened as a gunfight stemming from the domestic dispute. Earlier updates from the scene reported that one man had approached or was outside the residence while another man was inside, and that the two exchanged shots at the doorway. Taken together with the later identification of those involved, the reporting indicates Pettaway was the person who died during that exchange, while Chapman survived after also being struck by gunfire.
Chapman was taken to a hospital for treatment. His wounds were described as non-life-threatening, with initial reporting indicating that the surviving participant had been shot in the hand and arm. Police did not announce that another gunman had fled the neighborhood, and authorities specifically indicated that there was no suspect on the run. The circumstances therefore differed from a shooting in which detectives were searching for an unidentified assailant; investigators already knew the identities of the two people involved in the exchange and were attempting to determine the legal responsibility for Pettaway’s death.
Huntington Police did not immediately announce an arrest or criminal charge against Chapman. Instead, investigators said the case would be presented to a grand jury, which would determine whether the circumstances justified filing charges. That decision was significant because the shooting had been described as a two-sided gunfight arising from a domestic dispute rather than an unexplained attack by an unknown shooter. The available initial reporting did not identify Chapman as having been taken into custody, nor did it describe him as a fugitive suspect.
The publicly available trail found for the case ends largely with that planned grand-jury review. No reliable later online reporting located for this synopsis documents an indictment, arrest, criminal trial, conviction, or acquittal of Chapman or any other person specifically for Pettaway’s death. Accordingly, the available sources establish that Chapman was the other identified participant in the fatal gunfight and that police intended to send the evidence to a grand jury, but they do not establish that he was ultimately charged with a crime. There is likewise no reliable online information located showing that investigators later identified an additional suspect in the killing.
