25-year-old man charged in July 10 shooting and robbery in Ypsilanti Township

By Kyle Feldscher Crime and courts reporter

Posted on Tue, Jul 24, 2012 : 3:31 p.m.

A 25-year-old Ypsilanti man paroled three months ago could face life in prison after being charged with five felonies in connection with a July 10 shooting on Bedford Drive in Ypsilanti Township.

Christopher Tillison

Courtesy of the state of Michigan

Christopher Tillison faces a charge of assault with intent to murder, three charges of armed robbery, a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm and a felony firearm charge, according to court records. He was arraigned on the charges at the Washtenaw County Jail Tuesday afternoon and is being held on a $250,000 cash bond, said Sgt. Geoffrey Fox of the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office.

Tillison is accused of being one of the men involved in the incident, in which an Ypsilanti Township man was shot in the knee at 10:45 a.m. July 10 in the 300 block of Bedford Drive, a street in the Huron Ridge Apartments near Eastern Michigan University. A car hit a second man, 31 years old, soon after the shooting.

“Specific details on who shot and what happened inside the house are not being released right now,” Fox said. “The investigation pointed right to him as being one of the two suspects who committed this crime.”

Tillison was arrested without incident in Ypsilanti Monday, Fox said. He did not know the exact location of the arrest.

The 31-year-old man drove the shooting victim to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital before going back to his apartment on Chestnut Drive, where he was met by police and then transported by Huron Valley Ambulance to the hospital. The men were in stable condition in the days after the incident.

Two men were interviewed and held on warrants that were unrelated to the shooting in the days following the incident. However, Tillison is not one of those people, Fox said.

The second suspect is still at large and police are still searching for information that might identify who that person is.

“We don’t have any information that’s helped us to positively identify the second suspect,” he said. “We have nobody in custody and nobody charged with being the second suspect, but obviously we continue to investigate that.”

The shooting took place exactly three months after Tillison was paroled. The 25-year-old has seven previous felony convictions, according to state records. Charges of assaulting, resisting or obstructing a police officer; possession of less than 25 grams of cocaine; receiving and concealing stolen property between $1,000 and $20,000 and two charges of second-degree home invasion stem from a March 19, 2009 incident, records show.

He also has a conviction for receiving and concealing a stolen motor vehicle on July 21, 2007, and unarmed robbery on Oct. 20, 2005.

He was set to be discharged from probation on April 10, 2014.