RoryKasel wrote:middle aged female wrote:The Suburban Avenger wrote:This must've been a helluva buzz kill for anyone enjoying a smoke outside the Tap Room:Police believe a gunman was targeting the four teens who were shot as they sat inside a car in a desolate area on Detroit's east side Monday night.
A 16-year-old Grosse Pointe Woods girl was killed and three other teens were wounded when a man armed with what was believed to be an assault rifle fired up to 30 rounds into their parked car about 9:15 p.m. A fifth teen escaped injury in the attack.
Detroit Police Chief James Craig today said the attack "does not appear to be random."
"There are some other dimensions of this that we know about that I can't go into at this point," he said.
I'm going to go with "they pissed off the guy they bought the weed (or something worse) from."Craig said police have had conversations with the one teen who was not struck by gunfire.
He said the last report he received on the three injured teens was that they were recovering. Craig called the shooting "tragic."
The wounded teens were a 16-year-old female, a 16-year-old male and a 15-year-old male.
Police say the teens were smoking marijuana in a car on Philip near Charlevoix, just three blocks from Detroit's border with Grosse Pointe Park.
"A vehicle pulled in front of them, the driver got out of the passenger side and fired several shots," Detroit police spokesman Adam Madera said, adding that crime-scene investigators found 25 to 30 shell casings.
Investigators were initially told the gunman was wearing Army-style fatigues and possibly body armor, but police say they have gotten conflicting statements about what happened.
The victims initially told police they were looking for the brother of one of the passengers and had pulled over in the area of Charlevoix and Philip when the attack occurred. But their statements appear to be in conflict.
"They're scared to tell their parents what they're doing" in Detroit, Assistant Police Chief Steve Dolunt said today.
He said it appeared the teens may have made earlier stops to buy marijuana and to buy something at a gas station before parking. The shooting could've been connected with drugs or road rage, Dolunt said.
"All their statements don't seem to be meshing," Madera said of the teens.
A spokeswoman at University Liggett School in Grosse Pointe Woods confirmed this morning that the dead girl was a student there.
"As you can imagine, we are heartbroken over the death of one of our students, and our thoughts and prayers go out to her family and friends and to the entire Liggett community during this very difficult time," said Michelle Franzen Martin, director of Marketing and Communications.
Harold Meeks, editor of the blog TellusDetroit.com, lives nearby and said he heard a fully-automatic weapon fired Monday night. He said the noise was so rapid, he first thought it was fireworks.
Then he heard it again.
"You can't pull a trigger that fast," Meeks said.
Three teens are in critical condition at Beaumont HospitalBuy Photo
Camaro Newsom, 46, lives on the same block where the teens were shot.
He was lying in bed when he heard several bursts of gunfire at about 9 p.m., followed by sounds of cars speeding away. He said he thought he heard two different guns.
"I figured somebody was just shooting," Newsom said, adding that he frequently hears shots fired in the neighborhood. "A lot of people got guns around here."
He said it's terrible and sad that the teens were shot.
Police describe the suspect as a black man, about 6 feet tall, wearing a black hat and army fatigues driving a tan vehicle, possibly a Cadillac.
After the shooting, one of the teens drove the others about 2.5 miles to Beaumont Hospital on Cadieux in Grosse Pointe.
Dolunt said he hopes police get "a straight story" from the teens.
"The kids in Grosse Pointe -- they think it can't happen to them," he said. "People shouldn't blame the people in Detroit; your kids are buying drugs there."
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2014/12/23/grosse-pointe-farms-shooting-lower-east-side/20798333/
A pretty shitty dig by the cop, but, still.
They probably could've scored whatever they're looking for at My Dad's.
What about the kids in Harper Woods, or West Bloomfield, or Indian Village; do they think it can happen to them? No, they don't; it's part of being a kid. They think they're invincible.
Normally I side with cops, but that's a pretty douchebaggy thing to say. Here it is 2 days before Christmas and somebodies parents are arranging a funeral. That sucks in any community.
Every follow up article about the dead girl includes a disclaimer that her family adamantly denies she was using any kind of drugs. Seems that running interference on that angle would be the last thing they'd focus on but they'd be better off playing the 'Kids do the darnedest things' card.
Yeah, I read the "perfect child" article based largely on things her grandfather said. She was probably a perfectly lovely girl within proximity of her parents, grandparents and teachers, but in my experience, it's the girls who hold it in real tight are the ones that are the wildest on a Friday night. She didn't deserve to die for smoking some weed in the backseat of someone's car but I would guess that it wasn't that uncommon of an experience and this one time was the time she should have stayed home.But how could she know that? Poor kid and poor family.
