ST. CHARLES, Mo. (AP) - A man was shot several times during his granddaughter's first birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant in suburban St. Louis, the consequence of a simmering custody dispute, police said.
A witness told police that the mother, Aesian Anunique Clay, said to her child, "Say your last goodbye to your daddy because he is going to die today," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. But it was the child's grandfather who was shot, not the father.
Police offered a chilling account of the shooting Monday night at the family-friendly pizzeria in St. Charles. The grandfather, in his mid-40s, was seriously injured, but is expected to recover. His name was not released and it was not clear if he's the father of Clay or her ex.
Clay, 20, is jailed on $50,000 bond on assault charges, though authorities say it was her boyfriend who pulled the trigger. Police say Clay refused to name him. Officers were searching for the boyfriend and others who were with him at the time of the shooting.
Clay was angry with the child's father because he failed to take her on a visitation day, police said.
Court documents indicate Clay told the father during an argument at the party that he better have a gun. She then called her boyfriend and told him to bring a weapon to the pizzeria, a witness told police.
Clay's boyfriend arrived a short time later with another man and a woman, and a scuffle began. The child's father was not hurt but the grandfather was shot several times in the lower body. No one else was hurt.
Police searched Clay's phone and said they found several photographs of Clay with the gunman, including many in which the couple took turns holding a handgun with an extended capacity magazine.