Custody dispute cited in St. Louis-area pizzeria shooting

ST. CHARLES, Mo. (AP) - A man was shot several times during his daughter's first birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant in suburban St. Louis, in a simmering custody dispute, police said.

A witness told police that the mother, Aesian Anunique Clay, said to her child, "Say your last goodbye to your daddy because he is going to die today," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/1zgzx2m ) reported.

Police offered a chilling account of the shooting Monday night at the family-friendly pizzeria in St. Charles. The child's father was seriously injured after being shot several times in the lower body, but is expected to recover.

Clay, 20, is jailed on $50,000 bond on assault charges, though authorities say it was her boyfriend who pulled the trigger. Police say Clay refused to name him. Officers are searching for the boyfriend and others who were with him at the time of the shooting.

Clay was angry with the child's father because he failed to take her on a visitation day, police said.

Court documents indicate Clay told the father during an argument at the party that he better have a gun. She then called her boyfriend and told him to bring a weapon to the pizzeria, a witness told police.

Clay's boyfriend arrived a short time later with another man and a woman, and shot the child's father, police said. No one else was hurt.

Police searched Clay's phone and said they found several photographs of Clay with the gunman, including many in which the couple took turns holding a handgun with an extended capacity magazine. Police weren't sure if it was the gun used in the attack.