Suspended Southeast student pleads guilty to firearm charge from fatal Carbondale shooting

Suspended Southeast Missouri State University student Dwayne John Dunn Jr., 22, of St. Louis pleaded guilty Monday in Jackson County, Illinois, Circuit Court in Murphysboro to reckless discharge of a firearm stemming from an Easter party shooting in Carbondale last year.

Two other suspended Southeast students face murder charges, prosecutors said.

Dunn is charged with discharging a Smith and Wesson handgun March 27, 2016, by “shooting it into the sky in a populated neighborhood in Carbondale, which endangered the safety of numerous individuals standing in the vicinity,” the state’s attorney’s office in Jackson County said in a news release.

Reckless discharge of a firearm, a class 4 felony, carries a maximum penalty of up to three years in the Illinois Department of Corrections, followed by a year of mandatory supervised release or up to 30 months of probation or conditional discharge, according to the release.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. May 24 in Murphysboro, State’s Attorney Michael C. Carr said in a news release.

Dunn and fellow Southeast students Travis Tyler of Webster Groves, Missouri, and John Ingram of Hazelwood, Missouri, were arrested after a shooting at 402 W. Walnut St. in Carbondale during a party.

All three were suspended from Southeast. They remain suspended and are not enrolled, university spokeswoman Ann Hayes said Monday.

Tyler and Ingram are scheduled to go to trial in June on charges of first-degree murder stemming from the shooting death of Carbondale musician Tim Beaty, 41.

According to prosecutors, Tyler and Ingram shot at Nehemiah Greenlee, who was injured.

Beaty was inside his home at 334 W. Walnut St. when he was struck fatally by a stray bullet, Carbondale police said in a news release last year.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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