On a warm afternoon in May, D.C. police believe Terry Thompson was trying to sell a long, AR-15 style gun in a duffel bag outside a 7-Eleven in Bellevue. When Thompson encountered Chris Callahan in the store’s parking lot, he allegedly slammed the duffel bag into Callahan’s head, then fired a single shot through the bag into Callahan’s face and killed him.
It’s not clear what prompted the scuffle, but witnesses say Thompson was acting “erratically” at the time, according to court documents. Thompson later told an acquaintance in the neighborhood he was given a “bad batch of drugs,” prompting the sudden outburst with Callahan. Police arrested Thompson a day after the shooting when someone spotted him in the same shopping center as the 7-Eleven, and prosecutors charged him with murder a short time later.