| Updated: 11/19/2009 1:27 pm |
Published: 11/18/2009 4:28 pm
|
Two shootings in less than two hours and just a few blocks apart. One victim is dead. Another is in the hospital.
The first shooting happened around 3:30pm at the intersection of Tecumseh and Birmingham. Then, just after 5:00pm, a woman was shot outside a grocery store at Pine and Lewis. Fox 23's Douglas Clark has details.
Police do not think the shootings are connected. But they believe both stemmed from an argument. And the two scenes tied up officers for hours.
Police arrived at the first scene to find a man who had been shot, lying in the back seat of a Ford Thunderbird.
“I just came outside and the guy was lying in the back seat and the two guys in the car took off running down the road,” says neighbor Shannon Oakley.
Police later caught one of those men and recovered a gun. They think the shooter was in one of the front seats of the car.
“It’s really tragic. School has recently let out. There’s a school less than half a mile from here. It just goes to show that when people are desperate and in a criminal state of mind, nothing else around them matters,” says Tulsa Police Corporal David Crow.
The victim was transported to the hospital in critical condition where he later died.
Then, an hour and a half later, another shooting a few blocks away at a busy shopping center parking lot. One woman was shot and taken to the hospital. Two other women were arrested.
Neighbors say they want police to be more proactive in preventing crimes before they happen.
“Stuff happens on the north side like this. And now since it happened, we have all these people out here but we need them out here when nothing is happening,” says one witness.
With the police force three officers lighter following city-wide budget cuts, many here are feeling the effects of a police force spread thin.
“There was a burglary,” says Mike Fisher. “I’ve been waiting for a cop for over two hours. They’re telling me they can’t dispatch because of all this and they don’t have enough officers.”
