A wounded nephew killed his uncle in a shootout — apparently over a prized pet fighting rooster — early Wednesday morning at a Moore Cemetary Road mobile home near Decatur, Tenn., in Meigs County, authorities said. 
 
 Killed in a 2 a.m. hail of gunfire was Timothy Dewayne Johnson, 52, whose body was found in the driveway. His seriously wounded nephew, Larry Eugene Johnson Jr., 28, was inside the trailer when authorities arrived. 
 
 The rooster, reportedly named “Bubba,” is of a variety that’s bred to engage in combat, but had been Timothy Johnson’s “pet” for several years, Meigs County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Alex Clary said. The bird was found tied to a chair outside the trailer. 
 
 “I guess that’s the way these people keep their chickens,” Clary said. “I’m having a hard time believing it was over a chicken.” 
 
 The bird was unharmed and left with food and water within reach. 
 
 Timothy Johnson had arrived at Larry Johnson’s mobile home and confronted his nephew to accuse him of stealing the gamecock, according to a news release from 9th Judicial District Attorney General Russell Johnson. 
 
 Larry Johnson told a bystander his uncle had drawn a gun and that he was trying to grab the gun when he was shot in his chest under his left arm, according to the release. Larry Johnson “retreated and returned fire multiple times with a pistol he was carrying,” according to the release. 
 
 Larry Johnson was armed with a semi-automatic handgun that held 17 shots, the prosecutor said, and authorities estimated at least 11 gunshots were fired. Timothy Johnson, who apparently was standing when shot, was struck four times, authorities said. 
 
 Timothy Johnson fired a single-action .38-caliber revolver. A loaded .22-caliber pistol was found in one of his pockets. 
 
 Larry Johnson was flown by medical helicopter to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, where he was listed in stable condition Thursday afternoon. 
 
 Timothy Johnson’s body was taken to the Regional Forensics Center in Knoxville for an autopsy. 
 
 The district attorney general on Thursday said details remained “kind of fuzzy” over the exact nature of the dust-up between uncle and nephew. 
 
 Meigs County Sheriff Jackie Melton asked for the assistance of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and the district attorney general said he gave that go-ahead. Meigs County Sheriff’s Office investigators Clary and Scotty Wiggins are also working the case. 
 
 The prosecutor said his office will await the conclusion of the autopsy and toxicology results and completion of an investigative file before presenting the case to the Meigs County grand jury. That panel next meets in November. ||||| DECATUR (WATE) – A shootout in Meigs County over the alleged theft of a gamecock ended with the rooster’s owner killed and his nephew in the hospital. 
 
 District Attorney Russell Johnson’s office says officials were called to a home on Moore Cemetery Road in Decatur just after 2 a.m. Wednesday morning for a shooting call. Larry Eugene Johnson, Jr. was inside one of two mobile homes on the property with a gunshot wound to the chest. His uncle Timothy Dewayne Johnson was dead from apparent gunshot wounds in the driveway. 
 
 April Johnson, Larry’s wife, was inside the home when this happened. 
 
 “I heard yelling and then I heard gun shots. I heard one gun shot. I heard two gun shots and then I heard multiple gun shots and then I didn’t hear nothing else,” said Johnson. 
 
 Investigators say Timothy Johnson had come to the home and confronted Larry Johnson about the alleged theft of his prized fighting rooster. April says her husband had no part in that. 
 
 “My husband didn’t steal no chicken. We hadn’t seen him in forever,” said April Johnson. 
 
 Then things started to get heated. Apparently, Larry Johnson told someone with him that Timothy Johnson drew a gun. Larry Johnson tried to grab his uncle’s gun when he was shot in the chest. 
 
 That’s when Larry fired back several times with his own gun. His uncle ended up dying in the driveway while he scrambled to get inside the home. 
 
 “He yelled, ‘April, come here. He shot me. Call 911,'” said April Johnson. 
 
 Larry Johnson was flown to UT Medical Center and is still in the intensive care unit, according to family members. His wife said he has two broken ribs along with a punctured lung and a bullet still inside him. 
 
 Timothy Johnson’s family is convinced the rooster was taken by Larry. Johnson While that’s debatable, both sides do agree this shouldn’t have happened. 
 
 “Regardless of grudges or whatever the case may be, this ain’t the way to solve anything because nobody wins in the end,” said April Johnson. 
 
 April Johnson says her husband shot his uncle out of self defense. Both families say the two men had a good relationship and they didn’t expect this to happen. 
 
 Timothy Johnson’s body has been taken for autopsy. The district attorney’s office says once all autopsy and toxicology tests are in, as well as a complete investigative file, the case will be presented to the next Meigs County Grand Jury which meets in late November. ||||| Sorry, your browser is unable to play this video.Please install Adobe Flash ™ and try again. Alternatively upgrade to a modern browser. 
 
 A Tennessee mother has paid tribute to her eight-year-old daughter after she was shot dead, allegedly by her 11-year-old neighbor. 
 
 
 
 “She was a precious little girl, she was a mommy’s girl, no matter how bad of a mood you were in she could always make you smile,” Makayla Dyer’s mother, Latasha Dyer, told local TV station WATE, speaking with difficulty through tears. 
 
 “I want her back in my arms. This is not fair. Hold and kiss your babies every night – you’re never promised the next day with them,” Dyer said. “I hope the little boy learned his lesson because he took my baby’s life and I can’t get her back.” 
 
 According to police in White Pine, a rural town in the American south, the two children were playing in the mobile home park where they lived when the boy asked to see puppies that belonged to the girl’s family. When the girl said no, the boy shot her in the chest with a 12-gauge shotgun from his mobile home window. 
 
 “When we first moved to White Pine, the little boy was bullying Makayla,” Dyer told WATE. “He was making fun of her, calling her names, just being mean to her. I had to go the principal about him and he quit for a while and then all of a sudden yesterday he shot her.” 
 
 The boy – who has not been named because of his age – has been charged with first-degree murder as a juvenile, and court proceedings are likely to be confidential because of his age. The boy’s family have not spoken to the media since the incident. Child welfare officials are now investigating the boy’s family. He lived with five other children, according to Sheriff GW “Bud” McCoig of Jefferson County. 
 
 The shooting took place just after 7pm on Saturday, when the boy used his father’s shotgun to shoot the girl in the chest from his mobile home park window, officials said. 
 
 “We was in the house watching the Tennessee [football] game and heard the bang,” Chasity Arwood, manager for the mobile home park, told Knoxville News Sentinel. “[We] came out, the family was running to our porch yelling ‘He shot my baby, he shot my baby’.” 
 
 Arwood apparently had to hold Dyer back as she attempted to reach for her daughter after she was shot. 
 
 White Pine, Tennessee 
 
 “My husband had to guard the little girl until the rescue people got here,” Arwood told the Sentinel. “I was holding the family back trying to tell them ‘You can’t touch her, you can’t touch her’. 
 
 “Having to keep a momma away from her baby, being a momma, is really hard. That is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.” 
 
 When the boy’s mother heard what happened, Arwood said, “she slammed the door, locked it, and we never seen her after that”. 
 
 When the boy’s mother refused to come out, a distraught Latasha Dyer broke her neighbor’s window. Arwood said she gave Dyer a towel to soak up the blood on her hands, and a blanket to keep warm. 
 
 The shooting shook the eastern Tennessee county of 52,000, nestled along the Cherokee national forest on the western edge of North Carolina. Sheriff McCoig, whose office is investigating the incident, could barely contain his grief at a press conference where he informed reporters of the shooting. 
 
 “Well, by the grace of God,” McCoig said before he stopped, shook his head, looked up and started again. “There’s a loss [of] an eight-year-old child, and our department is hurting, and emergency personnel that responded is hurting, but we all have to pick up and be there for each other.” 
 
 He said local chaplains and pastors had come to the mobile home park that evening, “and they help us bear the hardship of the loss of a little child”. 
 
 White Pine elementary, the school of 850 that both children attended (the girl in third grade, the boy in fifth) pulled grief counselors in from neighboring schools to speak with mourning parents, students and staff. 
 
 “We got together as a staff yesterday and had our emotional time with each other to try to prepare for today,” the school’s principal, Bill Walker, told reporters. “I don’t think you can prepare for when you walk in and see students that are hurting, and [the staff has] done a very good job with keeping those in check and watching over students.” 
 
 At the mobile home park, an impromptu memorial for Makayla has grown up on the girl’s porch, with balloons, a candle wrapped with a picture of Jesus and a wreath of silk flowers, WATE reported. Neighbors have covered with hay a white, spray-painted patch of grass marking where Dyer died. Arwood is looking after the girl’s two puppies. 
 
 “They’ve been running to the porch they know is their home,” she told WATE. 
 
 Gun rights are a polarizing and seemingly intractable issue in the United States, where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the country’s constitution. Just two days before the eight-year-old was shot in Tennessee, 10 people were killed and seven injured in at a mass shooting 2,600 miles away in Umpqua community college in Roseburg, Oregon. 
 
 The girl’s funeral is scheduled for Wednesday, local television station WBIR reported.
– It has all the trappings of a Tennessee noir: an uncle allegedly dead by his nephew's hand, a gunfight, a mobile home, and a kidnapped fighting rooster tied to a chair. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports police were called to the scene of a deadly shooting early yesterday shortly after 52-year-old Timothy Johnson showed up at his 28-year-old nephew Larry Johnson's mobile home to accuse him of stealing his prized rooster. Larry reportedly claims his uncle pulled a gun on him, so he tried to grab it and was shot in the chest. Police say Larry pulled his own gun in retaliation and launched—in the words of the News Sentinel—a "hail of gunfire" at his uncle. WATE6 reports Timothy was found dead in the driveway, and Larry was airlifted to the hospital for treatment. Officers located the fighting rooster tied to a chair in Larry's mobile home, surprisingly unharmed.