Police arrest suspect in December homicide in Brighton Heights

An argument over custody of a child escalated into a fatal shooting late last year, and Pittsburgh police say they now have the man who pulled the trigger in custody.

Corey Washington drove to the parking lot of a Family Dollar store in Pittsburgh’s Brighton Heights on the afternoon of Dec. 26 to exchange custody of a child, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case.

Once there, the complaint said, Washington argued with a person police identified only as Witness #1 and the altercation turned physical, with Washington pushing the person and the person trying to hit Washington.

A family member who accompanied Washington to the store parking lot intervened and began fighting with Witness #1, the complaint said.

At that point, the complaint said, Witness #1’s boyfriend Ambrose J. Sample Jr. shot Washington in the left shoulder and left side of his head.

When police arrived, Washington was unresponsive and not breathing, the complaint said. He later died at Allegheny General Hospital.

Sample Jr., 42, whose home address is unknown, was arrested around 2 p.m. Tuesday in the 200 block of Dinwiddie Street in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, police said.

He was charged with criminal homicide and firearms violations and taken to Allegheny County Jail after being denied bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Feb. 1, court records show.

Investigators discovered that Sample did not possess a permit to carry a concealed firearm and wasn’t allowed to legally possess one because he was found guilty of homicide in Westmoreland County in 1999, the complaint said.

Sample was sentenced to 13 to 27 years in prison for second-degree murder in December 1999, state Department of Corrections spokesperson Maria Bivens told the Tribune-Review.

Bivens said Sample was paroled on Jan. 19, 2012, but returned to prison twice for violating parole — once in 2013 and again in 2019. He was released from state prison on Nov. 25, 2020.