(Tribune photo/JANAR STEWART)
South Bend Police interview eyewitnesses to a shooting at 1804 Lincoln Way West around 6 p.m. Saturday. Hours later, officers still on the scene were shot at themselves as the Fourth of July holiday weekend violence continued.
Story Created:
Jul 6, 2008 at 3:34 AM EST
Story Updated:
Jul 7, 2008 at 4:40 PM EST
Police watching over the scene of a South Bend shooting were shot at themselves late Saturday as the holiday weekend violence continued.
The city's 911 dispatchers said officers were in the 1800 block of Lincon Way West after an unidentified man was shot and killed behind Wade's Unique Touch car wash.
Hours later, the officers themselves were shot at as they remained in the area.
No one was injured in the 11:45 p.m. incident, authorities said. South Bend Police also did not return fire in the 700 block of Johnson Street, where the gunfire originated.
But officers set up a perimeter in the area along Lincoln Way West, between Johnson and Brookfield streets, as they looked for at least one gunman.
This latest round of gunfire was the fifth over the Fourth of July holiday. In the other three incidents:
At about 10:30 p.m. Friday, a 19-year-old woman told police she was riding in a silver GMC Safari driven by 37-year-old Irese Hendrix of South Bend when the pair saw two men in the parking lot of the Charles Black Recreation Center, 3419 W. Washington St.
When Hendrix noticed that one of the men had a gun and was walking toward Algerine Henderson, an 18-year-old South Bend resident, Hendrix drove her vehicle toward the gunman, her passenger told police. The man moved out of the way and then fired several shots at Hendrix, striking her in the abdomen.
Her passenger then drove Hendrix to Memorial Hospital, where she was treated. Police found a bullet hole in her vehicle.
The 19-year-old passenger told police that Henderson had told her and Hendrix about an earlier fight he had had with the alleged gunman.
A woman told police she had been walking with Henderson through the Charles Black Center parking lot when the other man hit Henderson in the head with a beer bottle, and the two began fighting. Like Hendrix’s passenger, that woman told police the gunman shot at Hendrix as she tried to run him down with the Safari.
Shortly before 11 p.m., police were dispatched to the 1100 block of North Diamond Avenue on a reported shooting. There, they found Henderson at his brother’s home. Henderson said someone had driven him there and dropped him off.
Henderson told police nothing about the Charles Black Center. Instead, he said he had been playing basketball at Harrison Park, a small basketball court at Harrison and Lindsey avenues, when another player became angry about losing and started firing shots from a handgun.
Henderson had been grazed in the head by one of the shots, he told police. While being treated at Memorial Hospital, he told police he was confident that his friends could help him learn the shooter’s identity.
In an apparently unrelated incident, sometime around 1 a.m., someone shot Preston Brown, a 21-year-old South Bend resident, at the corner of Olive and Vassar streets, South Bend police Sgt. Gene Eyster said.
Brown, who was shot in the stomach, was uncooperative with police when they tried to question him, Eyster said.
And in yet another case, shortly before 2 a.m., someone shot a man inside The South Bank bar, 1763 Lincoln Way East.
The man was hit in the arm and shoulder before being transported to Memorial Hospital by the South Bend Fire Department.
That incident stemmed from a verbal argument between the two men, both in their mid-30s, Eyster said.
Tuesday, Jul 8 at 1:52 PM MARCI wrote ...
are you not one of those people?