'No signs of an altercation' before Pulliam special ed assistant fatally shot: report

On a May evening in 2022, Alyssa Henderson was pregnant and in labor at the UC Davis Medical Center when she received a voicemail from a Stockton police detective.

She pressed play on the message — and then burst into tears.

Police had just arrested a man they believed killed Henderson’s fiance, Mark Scott, outside a north Stockton liquor store in February, the detective said.

In the three months since Scott's death, Henderson agonized over who might have killed the man she was set to marry, and why, she said.

Her fiance was a father, a special education assistant and gym enthusiast with no gang affiliations or criminal connections, she said.

He was also the father of the couple's newborn − who Scott never got to meet.

"I did not want to give birth to my son knowing that the person who killed his father (was) still out there," she said.

On May 18, their son, Makye Scott, was born — and the man accused of killing his father was charged with murder.

'No signs of an altercation'

Antonio Thomasson, 36, was arrested on May 16 alongside 90 other people as part of a sweeping anti-gang operation that also recovered guns, drugs and cash, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced in June.

Operation Hybrid Havoc kicked off in January 2022 and targeted the Northside Gangster Crips, Sutter Street Crips, Norteńos and other gangs, authorities said.

Thomasson was charged with murder two days after his arrest.

A motive in Scott's killing has not been made public by investigators or in court documents. But information included in Scott's autopsy report, released to The Record in April, shows the attack may have been unprovoked.

“Surveillance footage showed no signs of an altercation leading up to the incident,” a description of the scene of Scott's death included in his autopsy report stated.

Scott left home the morning of Friday, Feb. 11 wearing a black hoodie, pinkish-red shorts, and a red Jordan backpack, Henderson recalled.

According to the description in the autopsy report, at around 1:30 p.m. Scott was standing in front of A-1 Liquor, located near the intersection of Hammer Lane and North El Dorado Street, when an "unknown individual" approached him.

Scott often walked to A-1 from nearby Pulliam Elementary School, where he worked as a special education assistant, to buy snacks on his break, according to Henderson.

The "unknown individual" police now believe was Thomasson “fired six rounds from a handgun toward (Scott) before fleeing the scene,” the description stated.

Five shots struck Scott, including one in the left side of his back. Scott was rushed to San Joaquin General Hospital, where he died at 3:30 p.m., the report said.

In addition to his hoodie, reddish shorts and backpack, Scott was also wearing three red bracelets and an orange bracelet when he died, the autopsy report stated.

Evidence against Thomasson has not yet been presented in court, and a trial is likely months or years away. He entered a not guilty plea in January.

'I knew something was wrong'

By evening, Henderson hadn’t heard from her fiance. She looked for him at the gyms he attended and at a park where he sometimes did yoga. “I knew something was wrong,” she said.

Then, she saw a Facebook post about a shooting that day near Pulliam around the time of Scott's break. Henderson rushed to the scene. Scott's backpack was sitting on the curb.

Henderson spent the three months after Scott's death “trying to make it make sense in my head.”

“I know him. He doesn’t have any gang affiliations, (he’s) not that kind of person,” she said.

Even if he had, she believes detectives would have found out about it, she said. "They looked into his whole life."

Scott has faced no criminal charges in San Joaquin County since at least 2015, when the court began keeping online records, a case search showed.

As Henderson's due date neared, she worried her grief and trauma over Scott's death would imprint on their baby.

"My biggest concern was, 'I'm not doing enough as a mother to make him not feel my pain'," she said. "(I was worried) he was going to be sad."

But when Makye arrived, he wasn't sad, Henderson said.

"There is so much joy in him," she said. "His smile is like, contagious ... he has his father's smile."

Thomasson remains behind bars at the San Joaquin County Jail. His case is set to return to court in June.

Record reporter Aaron Leathley covers public safety. She can be reached at aleathley@recordnet.com or on Twitter @LeathleyAaron. Support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow.

This article originally appeared on The Record: Why was Mark Scott, an SUSD employee, killed in Stockton last year?