Man Accused Of Fatally Shooting Girlfriend 8 Years After He Shot Another Woman

A Georgia man convicted of wounding a woman in a shooting eight years ago has been accused of fatally shooting another woman on Saturday.

Davante Parks, 26, turned himself in to the Richmond County jail on Sunday after authorities say he fatally shot Laquana Lang, 27, in her home in Augusta, according to an arrest warrant cited by WRDW, a CBS affiliate, and WJBF, an ABC affiliate.

Authorities reportedly said in the warrant that Lang’s children, ages 2 and 5, were left alone in the house for hours with their mother’s body, and eventually had to crawl and walk through her blood to get help.

Deputies identified Parks as the children’s stepfather, according to WRDW. Facebook pages for Parks and Lang said they were in a relationship.

Parks was booked on charges including murder and two counts of child cruelty in the first degree, jail records show. It was not immediately clear if he has an attorney representing him.

The Richmond County coroner’s officer told HuffPost that Lang was shot at least once inside the home, and was pronounced dead on the scene at 11:06 a.m. An autopsy has been scheduled.

Court records show that Parks had been released on parole in July after pleading guilty to aggravated assault and a firearm-related charge in 2018. According to Georgia’s State Board of Pardons and Paroles, he became eligible for parole after serving a third of his 12-year sentence in 2020. However, he was not released until July, at which point he had served eight years.

Parks shot and injured a then-25-year-old woman at an apartment complex in 2016, The Augusta Chronicle reported. This week, McKie told WJBF she was shocked to see Parks’ name in the headlines again, and that she hadn’t realized he had been paroled.

McKie said her recovery from the shooting was difficult, and she had just gotten to a point where she felt comfortable leaving her home without needing to look over her shoulder.

“I haven’t been to sleep since I heard he was out, and Saturday I had to find out from a Facebook post that it was him that was out,” she told WJBF. “Nobody told me he was out.”

The district attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for a statement.

A spokesperson for the Georgia parole board said that staff with local district attorneys’ offices typically work with crime victims to get them registered with the state to be notified about an offender’s parole status. No one was registered as a victim in connection to Parks’ aggravated assault case in the state system, the spokesperson said.

The state is working on a program that could change the registration process to allow state officials to directly contact crime victims and ask them if they’d like to be notified about parole updates, according to the spokesperson.

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

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