A Greenville man is charged with murder after investigators say he shot a passenger to death inside his SUV.
Manuel Antonio Marin Arredondo, 41, was arrested Monday morning in downtown Spartanburg. A witness tells police he was driving down Daniel Morgan Avenue near the intersection of West Main Street when he saw two men wrestling over a gun. He says one of the men told him to call police because the other man had just killed someone. Spartanburg Public Safety officers say when they arrived on scene, they found Arrendondo sitting on the traffic island on Daniel Morgan Avenue, covered in blood. They say they found a man's body inside Arredondo's Dodge Durango which was parked on the street. The vicitm was later identified as 30-year old Nelson Fernando Tabares of Greer. The sheriff says Arredondo had no choice but to explain what happened.
"He is being cooperative about what happened," says Sheriff Chuck Wright. "It's kind of hard not to be when you've got a dead guy in your car."
The sheriff says the shooting happened around 4:00 am on Highway 29 in Wellford. He says the sequence of events actually started earlier when Arredondo and a friend offered to give Tabares a ride home from a nightclub in Greenville. According to police reports, the friend told officers Tabares was sitting in the backseat. He says Tabares and Arredondo, who was driving, got into an argument. He says Tabares kept grabbing the steering wheel, trying to force the vehicle off the road. Police say Arredondo pulled out a handgun and shot Tabares twice. They say he continued driving until he came to downtown Spartanburg. That's where he and the friend got out of the vehicle and began wrestling over the gun.
While a background check revealed that Arredondo has been arrested 12 times and convicted 9 times since 1988, none of the crimes were violent. He was, however, convicted in 2001 of the unlawful carrying of a firearm.
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