SOUTH BEND — A South Bend neighborhood is reliving the past after finding out that a deadly weekend shooting at a southeast side reunion may have started with an argument almost 2 decades ago.

St. Joseph County prosecutors filed murder and battery charges against 58-year-old Gary Stokes on Monday.

Stokes is the brother of South Bend Police Sergeant Charles Stokes, and has been employed by the South Bend School Corporation as a parent-teacher liaison at Harrison Primary School for the last 5 years. He also served as media coordinator for the Southeast Side Reunion.

Investigators say Stokes shot and killed Deric Foulks, 39, as the reunion was wrapping up on Saturday. Mario Rhodes, 20, was also hit in the back once by the gunfire. He was treated and released from an area hospital.

In probable cause court documents released late Monday, prosecutors say a South Bend police officer observed Stokes walk up to Foulks and pull out a handgun after talking with him.

Rhodes told officers he didn't see the two arguing, and didn't know Stokes. He said he turned to run away when he heard gunfire, and felt a bullet hit his back, according to court documents.

Prosecutors also say Stokes admitted he shot Foulks with a handgun, and told investigators he was carrying two guns at the time of the shooting, though he only used one. Prosecutors also say Stokes told officers he thought Foulks was armed, but he did not see Foulks "draw or fire a weapon."

Court records from 1991 also show it's not the first time the two had met over gunfire.

Stokes and his son Booker were victims of a shooting themselves in October of 1991, and the man convicted of pulling the trigger is the same man Stokes is now accused of killing: Deric Foulks.

According to filings in the South Bend Tribune on October 15, 1991, Cornelius Johnson, then 18, Booker Stokes, then 21, and his father Gary Stokes, then 41, were hit by gunfire while they were inside Stokes' car at the intersection of Dayton and St. Joseph streets.

Each man was listed in critical condition following the shootings.

The next day, police arrested Samuel Taylor, then 29, Vernon Taylor, then 28, and Deric Foulks, then 22. Foulks was accused of firing at least six shots into the car, and both Taylor brothers were accused of assisting a convicted criminal.

Both brothers turned down a plea agreement on that charge.

But, according to court records, Foulks agreed to a plea bargain for his role in the case on March 6, 1992.

The deal threw out one of the three counts of attempted murder against Foulks, along with a charge for being a habitual offender.

Foulks was sentenced on April 1, 1992 to serve two 30-year prison sentences concurrently, or at the same time. But Indiana Department of Corrections records show he was released on parole in September of 2007, after serving just 16 years of the sentence.

The St. Joseph County Prosecutor's Office and St. Joseph County Metro Homicide Unit investigators wouldn't comment on any potential connections between the 1991 case and Saturday's shooting, but those who knew both men said there was no doubt history played a role.

Booker Stokes had also been shot two years before, on February 14, 1990 in an unrelated incident on North Elmer Street. South Bend Tribune archives show Stokes told police in that incident that he got into an argument with a man outside a home on Elmer, and that man then pulled out a gun and shot him. According to the Tribune story, Stokes refused to tell investigators what led up to his being shot.

Court documents also show Booker Stokes was present during Saturday's shooting at the reunion. A South Bend police officer at the park says he saw Booker Stokes driving Gary from the scene in a blue Buick Regal.

Gary Stokes had helped organize the reunion, and those who served on the organization committee with him say it's hard to believe he was involved.

"I hear his name and I still don't want to believe it," said reunion co-chairman James King. "I grew up with [Gary]. I've know him for 40 years. I had no inkling whatsoever [that this might happen.] It was a total surprise."

"They were saying it was Gary, and I said, 'man, I don't know,'" agreed reunion co-chairman NC Coleman.

Friends also say they doubt either man knew their reunion was coming that day.

"That day, he was real cool to me," said Coleman. "He was talking with people, smiling, and he said, 'I'm going to go sell some more of these shirts.' I didn't even know Deric was in the park. I never seen him until that particular time [when the shots were fired.] People say they had a few words exchanged. But I didn't see that."

But a South Bend police officer says he did see the two argue briefly before the shots were fired. And those still living in the neighborhood where it all began in 1991 said they know exactly what the argument was about.

"Back then, Deric threatened he was going to come back and finish the job," said one neighbor who didn't want to be identified, saying she was afraid of retaliation.

"It was all about what happened back then," said another who also asked not to be identified. "Ask anybody around here. They all remember it."

For a neighborhood already divided, it's opened up the same old wounds.

"It's like losing a part of you -- an arm or something. It hurts," said Coleman.

"It's a lose-lose situation, what happened. Because it hurts everybody. Not just the southeast side, but the whole city," said King.