SOUTH BEND — A weekend shooting that left a South Bend man dead is jogging the memories of former police investigators, who worked a case 17 years ago involving the same two men.

The shooting at a park on East Wenger Street early Saturday night left Deric Foulks, 39, dead. Mario Rhodes, 20, was also hit in the back by the gunfire. He was treated and released from a local hospital.

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

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 where the shots were fired Saturday.

Court documents show it's not the first time the two met over gunfire, but the connections may run even deeper than investigators first thought.

Foulks pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted murder in March of 1992. 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.

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.

But some in the neighborhood where all 6 men used to live say the problems between the two sides may have started long before a single shot was ever fired.

"Time goes by. But the names you remember," said former South Bend Police Homicide Detective David Dosmann, at the time, a Sergeant. Dosmann retired from the department more than a decade later as a Captain.

News of Saturday's shooting brought back vivid memories.

"I recognized both names, and I thought back -- well, yeah, I remember being called out in the wee hours of the morning," said Dosmann.

Spent shell casings littered the corner of Dayton and St. Joseph Streets on South Bend's Southeast side just after 1:15am on October 15th, 1991.

Gary and Booker Stokes and Cornelius Johnson lay in Memorial Hospital's emergency room, fighting for their lives.

"All 3 victims were shot multiple times and were in critical condition," recalled Dosmann.

Some of their names were familiar to investigators who worked beats on the city's northwest and southeast sides.

Booker Stokes had been shot in the chest nearly two years before after an argument in front of a northwest side home.

Archived clippings from the South Bend Tribune show he refused to tell officers what led to the shots being fired.

7 months later, Booker Stokes was arrested during a drug raid at a home on Sherman Avenue, and charged with possession of cocaine.

South Bend Police say Gary Stokes had no criminal record, aside from traffic citations, before he was arrested in connection with Saturday's shooting. But his brother Charles Stokes is a South Bend Police Department Sergeant.

Foulks' alleged accomplices in the 1991 shooting -- brothers Samuel and Vernon Taylor each faced several unrelated drug and weapons charges several years after Foulks' was convicted.

Dosmann was also the lead investigator in a case involving Deric Foulks' father Willie. Indiana Department of Corrections records show Willie Foulks was sentenced in April of 1990 to serve 160 years behind bars for two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.

A year later, Deric Foulks cut a plea deal on two counts of attempted murder in connection with the Dayton Street shootings.

But the problems, say those who still live in the neighborhood where Foulks lived before he was sentenced to prison, started long before those shots were ever fired. And neighbors say they started far away from the Dayton Street crime scene, on the city's northwest side where Gary and Booker Stokes, Cornelius Johnson, and Deric Foulks all lived just blocks apart.

Several neighbors remembered the "bad blood" between the two sides back then. But, even 17 years later, all were still too afraid of retaliation to speak about it on camera.

Dosmann says there may be a clear reason why.

Two days after the Dayton Street shootings in 1991, WSBT archives show prosecutors presented evidence to a St. Joseph County Judge they said linked Foulks and the Taylor brothers to a gang in Detroit. Some believe that gang later evolved into a local gang called "dawg life."

"Dawg life was a gang, or what some called a gang, involving people that primarily were associated with, or grew up on the southeast part of South Bend," Dosmann said. "I remember, probably in the mid 1990's, that there was an investigation that was conducted by federal law enforcement, in conjunction with state and local law enforcement targeting the dawg life gang."

In 1991, Dosmann also told reporters it's possible drugs may have played a role in the Dayton Street shootings, though, today, he doesn't recall if that was ever substantiated.

It's still unclear what role -- if any -- gang or drug involvement may have played in the cycle of violence that's gripped the two sides. But family members of the Taylor brothers told WSBT Tuesday -- whatever the cause--they "hope it's all finally put to rest."

After 34 years working cases like these, Dosmann hopes so too.

"Most certainly, most certainly," he said. "It's tragic, and communities suffer."