LAWRENCE -- There's been a string of gun violence at Marion County Parks in the last month. The latest was Sunday night at a park in Lawrence.
“This was bad enough, but it could have been a lot worse,” Gary Woodruff, Deputy Chief of Police at Lawrence Police Department said.
Lawrence police responded to a shooting at Lawrence Community Park around 10:15 p.m., where they found three people injured from gunshot wounds. This is located at 5301 N. Franklin Road.
Two of the individuals were treated at the scene for graze wounds and a third, an adult female, was taken to the hospital for a gunshot wound to the leg. Her injuries are considered non-life threatening.
“Once those bullets are fired, they can’t be taken back. We are very fortunate that it wasn’t worse,” Deputy Chief of Police Woodruff added.
Lawrence Community Park is the latest in Marion County to be the center of a shooting investigation. Last Monday a teen was shot at Riverside Park.
The very next day, police say at least 40 shell casings were recovered from the basketball court at MLK park after a drive by. Police say a home was damaged in the shooting.
On May 19th police say a shooting happened at Thompson Park. On May 16th police say one person was shot at Bertha Ross Park.
“We are going to be increasing actually paying overtime to have extra presence in our parks. We will hopefully prevent incidents like this from happening - being very proactive with it,” Deputy Chief of Police Woodruff told WRTV.
Just last week, IMPD added mobile cameras at several area parks in Indianapolis. The department tells WRTV that while it’s still too early to see what type of difference they have made, they will re-asses what locations the cameras need to be at on a weekly basis.
As far as Lawrence PD adopting similar cameras?
“We have several cameras already around the city – not necessarily at parks but it’s something that we will be exploring and it’s on our radar and we will hopefully be including it in our 2024 budget,” Deputy Chief of Police Woodruff concluded.
