He remained in the Clark County Jail on Wednesday night and is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday on charges of murder and discharging a firearm into a habitation, according to the Springfield Police Division.
Mollett, 21, was discovered in an alleyway near the intersection of North Limestone Street and Stanton Avenue about 10 p.m. Aug. 8, 2013.
A witness who called 9-1-1 told dispatchers she heard up to seven shots fired and then looked out her window and saw a body lying on the ground.
Springfield Police Chief Stephen Moody called the shooting “an execution” but declined to give details on the motive.
Follow-up work by detectives, evidence testing by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations and the help of an informant who came forward led to the arrest, according to Moody and court records.
The firearm charge stems from an incident that occurred six days prior to Mollett’s death in which shots were fired from a 9 mm pistol into a home in the 800 block of East McCreight Avenue.
Detectives got information from an informant that Fields was the perpetrator of both shootings and BCI matched the bullets from both scenes to the same gun, according to an affidavit filed in Clark County Municipal Court on Wednesday.
“I can’t thank the person that came forward enough,” Mollett’s mother, Leslie Blevins, said. The family has a sense of peace now, she said, knowing that a suspect has been identified.
But the news came as a shock to Schuyler Mollett’s sister Hayleigh Mollett, who not only dated Fields in high school, but said he had gotten back in touch following her brother’s death and wanted to hang out and be a friend to her in her grief.
“This person has played me as my friend for two years,” she said.
Fields and her brother were friends from high school, she said, and although she knew they had their differences, she never expected him to be named a murder suspect.
His family described Schuyler Mollett as a lovable guy who never met a stranger.
“He knew everyone,” his sister said.
He had hundreds of friends because he never met a stranger, his mother said. She also feels sorry for Field’s mother who now could lose her son, too.
“I’m sorry that this kid and his family have to go through this. He’s just a kid,” Blevins said.
Moody also thanked those in the community who came forward with information about the case.
“This just goes to show that people need to have the courage to step up,” he said. “There are other families out there … other unsolved murders.”
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