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Man arrested at Camp Shelby says noises were truck backfires, not gunshots

Law officers inspect a vehicle matching the description of the one used in a shooting incident outside Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg, Miss. Authorities searched Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2015, for a man who fired gunshots from a vehicle in the vicinity of soldiers at a military facility in Mississippi, although no one was reported wounded, a sheriff said. The shots were fired near a checkpoint where two soldiers were standing guard to the Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center, Perry County Sheriff Jimmy Dale Smith said at a news conference. (Eli Baylis/The Hattiesburg American via AP)
Law officers inspect a vehicle matching the description of the one used in a shooting incident outside Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg, Miss. Authorities searched Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2015, for a man who fired gunshots from a vehicle in the vicinity of soldiers at a military facility in Mississippi, although no one was reported wounded, a sheriff said. The shots were fired near a checkpoint where two soldiers were standing guard to the Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center, Perry County Sheriff Jimmy Dale Smith said at a news conference. (Eli Baylis/The Hattiesburg American via AP)

By Associated Press 3 min read

NEW AUGUSTA, Miss. — Soldiers participating in a training exercise on a Mississippi military base heard it Tuesday and Wednesday – noises they believed were gunshots around the fringes of Camp Shelby.

On edge after a gunman attacked military members in Chattanooga, Tenn., authorities began looking for a maroon pickup truck that the soldiers described from the Tuesday incident. They found it late Wednesday morning when Alfred Baria Sr. drove past officers on a state highway just south of New Augusta.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation took him into custody at gunpoint, with officials calling a bomb squad into sparsely populated Perry County east of Hattiesburg to investigate plastic pipes and other items they found in the truck.

But the 61-year-old Baria told authorities that it wasn’t gunshots at all, just the backfiring of his battered Isuzu. That’s a story backed up by his son in an interview Wednesday evening with The Associated Press. Alfred Baria Jr. said his dad’s pickup backfires loudly every time someone shifts gears and steps on the gas.

And those pipes? Two big, long ones were for plumbing a newly built auto repair shop in the backyard, Alfred Baria Jr. said. Small pipe containers with caps were for storing auto parts and hardware, he said, showing a reporter one on a shelf inside the shop.