Man charged with firing gun outside North Naples nightclub

Jeremy Eugene Tye

NAPLES —

After a fist fight broke out at Club Ultra early Thursday morning, Collier County sheriff’s deputies arrested a 24-year-old man who they say fired a gun into the air before fleeing down U.S. 41 North.

Jeremy Eugene Tye, of the 14900 block of Coastal Bay Circle, North Naples, was charged with discharging a firearm from a vehicle, which is a felony.

Around 2:15 a.m., a crowd of about 150 people from the club were in the parking lot of Club Ultra, 15495 U.S. 41 N., when about a dozen people began to fight, according to an arrest report. As the fight began to break up and the crowd started to disperse, reports say deputies notice a man, later identified as Tye, walking to a nearby furniture store parking lot.

Tye had not participated at the fight, but was present.

About a minute later, the deputies heard two gunshots and saw a blue Ford car and a gold Chevrolet car speed from the furniture store parking lot south on U.S. 41 North, reports said. One of the deputies advised that the gunshots came from the Chevy.

After a traffic stop, deputies found Tye in the back seat of the Chevy. The deputies searched the car, and found a black handgun under the driver’s side seat in a position consistent with it being placed their by someone sitting in the back seat.

The gun, a semi-automatic .40-caliber Ruger loaded with hollow-point rounds, was warm and smelled of burnt gun powder.

The driver of the car identified Tye as the shooter.