A Lake Station teen, 17, is facing an attempted murder case over a months-long simmering feud with the victim, documents show.
The teen shooter is also charged with battery, theft and four counts of intimidation. The Post-Tribune is not naming him because he’s a minor.
He is in custody, held on a $100,000, or $10,000 cash surety bond. Another court hearing is on Aug. 22 before Lake Superior Judge Natalie Bokota.
In Wednesday’s confrontation, cops believe both had guns; the shooter fired three or four times at the victim, who was not hit. A witness said the pair didn’t like each other since they met five months earlier.
Lake Station Police responded around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday on the 2400 block of Fairview Avenue for a shots fired call. The shooting appeared to stem from an argument.
“I will start shooting right here,” the witness recalled a Black male said, before hearing gunshots.
Witnesses said a male with black dreadlocks with “red tips,” later identified as the shooter, ran north as he was getting shot at, to a black Nissan car that took off, then pulled into a driveway on the 2600 block of Miami Street, charges allege.
Police found a half-dozen 9-mm bullet casings near the scene.
The victim told cops that the shooter — an acquaintance — created a fake social media profile to lure him to fight. They had messaged back and forth on where to meet. The shooter told him to meet at a skate park to fight, but didn’t show.
In the end, the shooter walked up to him just south of a tire and muffler shop on Fairview Avenue. As the victim tried to draw his gun, the shooter opened fire, he said. The victim ran toward Central Avenue where police found him.
Cops tracked the car to a house on the 2600 block of Miami Street. Earlier, the shooter’s girlfriend, the mother of their 5-month-old child, woke up her sister and her sister’s boyfriend to go get him, worried he was picking fights with the victim.
Officers found the black Nissan with plates registered to a Dodge Durango. As they were there, the shooter walked out of the back of the home. The cops asked what he had been doing that day.
“Nothing,” he responded.
The victim shot at him unprovoked, the teen said. He didn’t have a gun, he told cops.
After getting permission to search the car and house, cops found a Stoeger 9-mm handgun that was jammed and missing five rounds.
Police found two containers with the shooter’s ammunition in a “baby bag.”
Officers later found a residential video that appeared to show the shooting.
The affidavit notes the victim was at the home on Miami Street on July 5 when his gun in a backpack went missing. He believed the shooter stole it.
On Wednesday, the girlfriend begged the shooter not to go, “because he had a child now,” the affidavit states. She, her sister and her sister’s boyfriend drove to get him.
The girlfriend claimed the shooter took the victim’s gun on July 5 for “safekeeping” since there were a lot of kids in the house. The police later discounted this, noting it had been reported stolen right away.
Later at the police station, the shooter allegedly threatened cops and said they didn’t have anything on him, such as video from the shooting.
mcolias@post-trib.com
