6/17/2010
By ERIN MATHEWS/Salina Journal

Journal Extra View video coverage of the shooting at North 13th from our news partner.

A 38-year-old north Salina man said he and about 15 friends were sitting outside listening to music, having some beer and enjoying life Tuesday night in front of his mobile home when a car sped by and "things came to a dead halt real quick."

The man was home Wednesday after being treated at Salina Regional Health Center for a bullet wound in his thigh.

A 35-year-old woman who was treated for a bullet wound in her calf was sleeping in the same mobile home Wednesday afternoon.

Salina police are seeking the man who shot them at about 10:25 p.m. Tuesday in the Del Ray mobile home park at 917 N. 13th.

The suspect is described as a black male, about 5 feet 8 inches tall and slightly heavy set. He was driving a blue, four-door Lincoln passenger car with a Kentucky license plate, said Salina Deputy Police Chief Carson Mansfield.

Anyone with information about this shooting is asked to call Crimestoppers at 825-TIPS, text SATIPS to CRIMES (274637), or visit www.pd.salina.gov and follow the Crimestoppers link to submit a Web tip. You may receive a cash reward of up to $1,000, and you are not required to give your name.

The names of the people who were shot are not being used for this story because it is Journal policy not to identify victims of violent crime until an arrest has been made.

Yelled at the car

The man said he yelled at the car to slow down as it drove by his house going at least 35 miles an hour in an area posted at 5 mph. Mansfield said the discussion quickly escalated into an argument between the two men. Mansfield said witnesses say racial slurs were used at one point, including "the N-word."

The driver left but returned about 10 minutes later and jumped out of his car. The 38-year-old man said he walked through the dark toward the driver, who he thought wanted to fist fight.

Instead, he said, the man held a gun to his chest. He said he ducked, and the first bullet missed him, but then he was struck in the thigh, and his girlfriend was also struck. Mansfield said witnesses say the shooter fired four shots with a medium-caliber handgun before getting back into his car and speeding away.

The 38-year-old man said he blacked out after he was shot and remembers nothing else. Witnesses say a registered nurse and a former military man who were on the scene immediately rendered aid, and several police officers and paramedics were there within minutes.

Saw her parents shot

The couple's 15-year-old daughter said she heard people yelling outside and came out the door of the mobile home just in time to see her parents both shot.

"Seeing it happen to my parents was the worst thing ever," she said. "I'd been fighting with them all day, and then seeing them get shot -- it just brought my world way down. I started screaming. I couldn't breathe."

She said she wanted to thank all of the friends, family and police officers who helped her parents and her that night.

One of them was her friend, 12-year-old Kuta Thompson, who tried to help her stay calm.

"She was starting to panic, and I tried to calm her down," Thompson said. "It was confusing with all the commotion, and the dust the car kicked up was bothering my asthma."

Steven Thompson, a maintenance worker at the mobile home park and Kuta's father, said he was among those who witnessed the shooting. He said he heard the shooter say "This is the way I do it gangsta style" before shooting the gun. He said he also heard racial slurs being used.

"The guy didn't have no respect for the law or anybody around him," Thompson said. "He didn't care if kids got hurt or adults got hurt. He was probably going 70 miles an hour when he left."

Showed him a mobile home

Sheldon Nelson, who owns the land on which the Del Ray mobile home park is located, said that several weeks ago he showed the man area residents believe to be the shooter a trailer for rent.

"He came in fast then, and I told him one problem was he'd have to get his foot off the gas," he said. "He said couldn't he just pay extra (to be allowed to drive faster)?"

Nelson said he thought the comment was made in jest.

"I thought he was just joking the way he said it," he said. "I took it at the time as humor."

He said speeding has long been an issue at the mobile home park.

"People go ripping through there, and we calm them down every once in awhile," he said. "There are 50 houses in there, so you know there are going to be quite a few kids."

Thompson said verbal disputes and altercations are a daily occurrence at the mobile home park, but it remains a safe place to live with affordable rent.

"If you come in here and live in the trailer park, it's like a Jerry Springer event," he said. "That's all it is."

Residents of the mobile home park seemed to be taking the incident in stride Wednesday. One woman who pulled into the park entrance Wednesday morning rolled down her window to say, "I don't want to dodge any bullets. Is everybody done shooting everybody around here?"

The shooting victim said doctors told him the bullet came within about half an inch of a major artery, and that it will take about two months to recover from the wound.

"It ain't keeping me down for long," he said. "I'm still full of piss and vinegar."

He said he believes he got shot for a good cause.

"The way I look at it, I might be in an immense amount of pain, but it wasn't in vain because if I didn't say something he might have hit (with the car) one of these kids," he said, pointing at a friend's toddler and infant children who were in his yard when the shooting occurred. "I took this bullet for him."

Didn't use racial slurs

The shooting victim denied using racial slurs, although witness accounts contradict that.

"I told him to slow down, and that was the end of it," he said. "Apparently, he didn't like that."

However, he said the man was probably reacting to the large Confederate flag hanging on his porch and a smaller one in his front window. On Wednesday, the larger Confederate flag had been taken down and was sitting in a laundry basket inside his door.

"He probably took it as a racial thing," he said. "To me, it's about the pride of the South. My heart's with the South, and it always has been with the South."

He said he had just moved to a new part of the mobile home park a week ago to get more space. He said when he moved, he wasn't sure how his Confederate flags and preference for classic rock and country music would go over with people living in nearby mobile homes who seemed to prefer rap music.

The man said he is not from the South, having been born in New York City. He said the incident would in no way change his feelings about displaying the Confederate flag.

"I lived in New York City for 15 years and never had a bullet shot at me," he said. "I move to rinky-dink Salina and get shot."

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