Off-duty officer charged after gun is fired in Rooster’s

Posted on Aug 1 2019 - 1:48pm by Kenneth Niemeyer

Christopher Gipson, a detective with the Magee Police Department, has been charged with a misdemeanor in connection to a gun being fired on the Square just after midnight on Tuesday. 

Gipson is a detective with the Magee Police Department and is the brother of Mississippi Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson.

People wait in line at Rooster’s on the Square on a Wednesday night. File Photo by Marlee Crawford

Oxford Police Department Captain Hildon Sessums said in a press release on Wednesday that OPD responded to Rooster’s Blues House after a report of someone shooting a gun inside the venue.

“Officers arrived and found that a subject had discharged his firearm and shot himself with a non-life threatening injury,” Hildon said in the press release.

Sessums said in a second press release that after an investigation Christopher Gipson had been charged with a misdemeanor for discharging a firearm within the city limits of Oxford.

Gipson’s case is being referred to the Oxford Municipal Court.

This is the second shooting inside a bar on the Square in the last two years. 

Desmond Brown was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison after being charged as a convicted felon in possession of ammunition after a shooting at The Lyric Oxford in April 2018.

Brown fired one shot upward which struck the underside of a balcony at the bar during the 2018 Double Decker Festival. 

The shooting prompted Mayor Robyn Tannehill to call for increased security measures on the Square, which led to the passing of the “Alcohol and Safety” ordinance in September 2018. 

The ordinance required bars on the Square to use ID scanners and install security cameras to the interior of their buildings.