Brian Stuart Sheppard

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Brian Stuart Sheppard, 38, of Christiansburg was charged with first-degree murder and using a firearm in the commission of a felony following the fatal shooting of James R. Fleshman, Jr., 48, of Roanoke Tuesday afternoon around 3 p.m. in the parking lot of the Wildwood Drive Food Lion.

According to a search warrant filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court Thursday, Salem police searched Sheppard’s residence, which is located in the 1500 block of Sleepy Hollow Road in Christiansburg Wednesday night.

Police were searching the residence for ammunition, semi-automatic handgun magazines, letters, hand-written notes, photos, cameras, maps of and to the City of Salem, cell phones, cell phone records, computers, electronic storage devices and/or any electronic/analog communication devices.

The warrant showed that police confiscated one (1) Polaroid picture and one (1) shipping carton for a Beretta from the Sleepy Hollow residence.

The search warrant also stated that Fleshman had called police moments before he was shot. A man identifying himself as James Fleshman called 9-1-1 and told them he was having problems with a man named Brian Sheppard.

The warrant went on to say, that Fleshman told dispatchers Tuesday that he saw Sheppard getting into a black Jeep in the grocery store parking lot. Contact with Fleshman was lost, and moment’s later dispatchers began receiving calls of shots fired in the Food Lion parking lot.

The warrant said Salem police took testimony from eyewitnesses and, based on those statements, Montgomery County deputies apprehended Sheppard about 20 minutes later in Christiansburg. Sheppard was driving a dark sport utility vehicle similar to the one described by witnesses, and the warrant said there was ammunition in the passenger seat of the vehicle.

Also according to the warrant, Sheppard told Montgomery County Deputy Alley, “he had shot a man in Salem 15 times.”

Fleshman, a seven-year employee of Pepsi, who was working at the time of Tuesday’s shooting, had been dating Sheppard’s estranged wife, according to Salem Police Department spokeswoman Melinda Payne.

Sheppard and Fleshman were no strangers to each other. On August 23, 2007, Sheppard was charged with assaulting Fleshman in the City of Radford. Sheppard was found guilty on November 14, 2007 of assault and was sentenced to six months in jail, suspended, and was placed on 12 months of probation, in which he [Sheppard] was to have no contact with Fleshman.

It was also learned by EverythingNRV that Sheppard had filed divorce papers in Montgomery County Circuit Court last Wednesday, April 23, 2008.

The documents showed that Sheppard and his estranged wife, Melissa Dawn Sheppard, were married on January 1, 1998 in Cherry Grove, South Carolina.

The two had one child together, a 5-year-old daughter, who was born in February 2003.

According to the separation agreement, which was filed March 21, 2007, the two had been living separately since Jan. 1, 2007.

The file also said that no reconcile is probable.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Sheppard at 10 a.m. on June 27 in Salem General District Court.

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