Shooting in fast-food parking lot investigated

Shooting in fast-food parking lot investigated A man was shot in a parking lot of a fast-food restaurant Sunday night, police said. The victim's injuries were not considered life-threatening. Metro police Capt. Randy Hickerson said this is what police have learned: At about 10 p.m. Sunday officers responded to the McDonald's at 524 Murfreesboro Pike and located one victim, 30, who had been shot at that location. He was transported to Vanderbilt University Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries. A silver four-door Lexus, possibly a 2004 model, had been sitting in the back parking lot for about 45 minutes, according to what witnesses told police. Inside the Lexus were four men. A GMC SUV with two men and two women pulled in next to the Lexus. Two people got out of the SUV and one or two got out of the Lexus. They went to the back of their vehicles to exchange bags of clothes. One of the men from the Lexus fired a shot, striking the victim. The possible shooter from the Lexus is described as a black man, 5 feet 9 inches tall, 160 pounds, wearing a white T-shirt and using a large black revolver. The second suspect from the Lexus is described as a black man, 5 feet 5 inches tall, 165 pounds, with dreadlocks and wearing a black shirt.The Hermitage Precinct is handling the investigation. — LEIGH RAY(tennesseean)

Davidson County crime log for May 22-25, 2008

CRIME LOG These are the most serious calls handled by the Metro police, listed by time, crime reported and address. Some reports may be unfounded. Police calls are listed by police precinct or town. When police cannot immediately determine the location of a crime, the address given is that of the police station or hospital where the crime was reported. I know many of the listings below are not part of the District "29", but, some of us work in these areas or have family and friends that live in these ares and do not read this blog...Pass it along because I will be posting the update every week... May 25 Antioch 2:43 p.m., rape, Chimney Top Drive Central 5:24 a.m., holdup/robbery, 500 block Murfreesboro Pike 6:28 a.m., holdup/robbery, 500 block Murfreesboro Pike 1:38 p.m., holdup/robbery, Charles E. Davis Boulevard and Cannon Street 9:22 p.m., holdup/robbery, 1200 block Martin Street 10:11 p.m., shooting, Pennock Avenue and Douglas Avenue Crieve Hall 8:42 a.m., nonresidential burglary, 5500 block Edmondson Pike Downtown 1:28 a.m., holdup/robbery, First Avenue North and Gay Street East 12:22 a.m., nonresidential burglary, 800 block Granada Avenue 12:59 a.m., holdup/robbery, 800 block Cherokee Avenue 8:35 p.m., rape, Oakwood Avenue Hermitage 4:40 a.m., holdup/robbery, 5900 block South New Hope Road 7:39 a.m., nonresidential burglary, 4400 block Lebanon Pike Madison 3:08 p.m., holdup/robbery, 2100 block North Gallatin Pike 9:52 p.m., residential burglary, 500 block May Drive 11:05 p.m., holdup/robbery, 100 block South Gallatin Pike North 5:35 p.m., holdup/robbery, 1700 block Jenkins Street Oak Hill 4:13 p.m., kidnapping, 100 block East Park Drive Old Hickory 8:31 a.m., nonresidential burglary, 4300 block Saundersville Road 1:47 p.m., residential burglary, 500 block Lawrence Street South 3:13 a.m., nonresidential burglary, 300 block Fesslers Lane 10:26 p.m., residential burglary, 600 block Bell Road Trinity Hills 1:46 a.m., holdup/robbery, 200 block West Trinity Lane Tusculum 3:25 a.m., holdup/robbery, 3900 block Apache Trail 8:10 p.m., residential burglary, 200 block Delvin Drive West 7:50 a.m., holdup/robbery, 7000 block Highway 70 South 11:41 a.m., residential burglary, 3700 block Park Avenue Woodbine 2:21 a.m., cutting/stabbing, 3700 block Nolensville Road 5:28 p.m., residential burglary, 500 block McIver Street May 24 Bordeaux 5:58 p.m., nonresidential burglary, 4200 block Ashland City Highway 10 p.m., shooting, 3200 block Mexico Drive Central 1:43 a.m., rape, 14th Avenue South 2:06 a.m., shooting, Wilburn Street and Meridian Street 3:34 a.m., holdup/robbery, Fesslers Lane and Murfreesboro Pike 11:49 a.m., residential burglary, 2500 block Glenrose Avenue 2:42 p.m., residential burglary, 1000 block Meridian Street 10:49 p.m., holdup/robbery, 400 block Murfreesboro Pike Charlotte Park 12:27 a.m., residential burglary, 500 block Annex Court Donelson 10:12 p.m., residential burglary, 3300 block Percy Priest Drive East 1:47 a.m., cutting/stabbing, 100 block Dellway Villa Road 2:20 p.m., shooting, 1500 block Rosedale Avenue 2:22 p.m., shooting, 1500 block Rosedale Avenue 3:54 p.m., residential burglary, 1300 block Joseph Avenue 9:17 p.m., shooting, 3400 block Dickerson Pike 9:25 p.m., holdup/robbery, 2600 block Gallatin Pike 11:49 p.m., holdup/robbery, Marie Street and Meridian Street Hermitage 2:24 a.m., cutting/stabbing, 4700 block Old Hickory Boulevard J.C. Napier 6:39 a.m., holdup/robbery, 600 block Claiborne Street 6:43 a.m., holdup/robbery, 600 block Claiborne Street Madison 12:01 a.m., holdup/robbery, 1100 block South Gallatin Pike 8:04 a.m., nonresidential burglary, 1800 block North Gallatin Pike 8:09 p.m., rape, Brink Haven Avenue Neelys Bend 7:41 p.m., residential burglary, 1100 block Bubbling Well Road North 5:32 a.m., holdup/robbery, 2700 block Meharry Boulevard 12:25 p.m., nonresidential burglary, 700 block Freelands Station Road 11:05 p.m., holdup/robbery, 1500 block 21st Avenue North 11:49 p.m., residential burglary, 1600 block 16th Avenue North South 11:32 a.m., holdup/robbery, 900 block Murfreesboro Pike 11:53 a.m., holdup/robbery, 900 block Murfreesboro Pike 11:53 a.m., nonresidential burglary, 1200 block Antioch Pike 6:18 p.m., holdup/robbery, 900 block Murfreesboro Pike Tusculum 12:15 a.m., shooting, 4500 block Packard Drive 6:49 p.m., residential burglary, 3800 block Creekside Drive Una 10:05 p.m., holdup/robbery, 2500 block Murfreesboro Pike West 1:36 a.m., holdup/robbery, Dr. D.B. Todd Jr. Boulevard and Charlotte Pike 6:46 a.m., nonresidential burglary, 600 block 42nd Avenue North 1:26 p.m., residential burglary, 900 block Woodmont Boulevard 2:19 p.m., holdup/robbery, 4100 block Hillsboro Pike 5:12 p.m., shooting, 1700 block Jefferson Street 10:24 p.m., shooting, 2200 block Childrens Way Woodbine 9:55 a.m., nonresidential burglary, 3700 block Nolensville Road May 23 Bordeaux 11:58 a.m., holdup/robbery, 3700 block Clarksville Pike Central 1:44 a.m., residential burglary, 600 block Frith Drive 4:07 a.m., rape, Shelby Avenue and South Fifth Street 10:01 a.m., residential burglary, 400 block North Second Street 1:45 p.m., residential burglary, 300 block South Eighth Street 4:11 p.m., holdup/robbery, 1000 block Fatherland Street 5:48 p.m., holdup/robbery, 1200 block Polk Avenue Charlotte Park 2:47 a.m., residential burglary, 600 block Westboro Drive Donelson 7:58 a.m., holdup/robbery, 200 block Shady Grove Road 9:05 a.m., holdup/robbery, 400 block Donelson Pike East 7:55 a.m., residential burglary, 1600 block Sunset Circle 3:56 p.m., holdup/robbery, 3200 block Gallatin Pike 7:45 p.m., holdup/robbery, 3000 block Gallatin Pike 9:31 p.m., residential burglary, 3200 block Vailview Drive 11:35 p.m., holdup/robbery, 3600 block Gallatin Pike Hermitage 6:10 p.m., residential burglary, 4300 block Andrew Jackson Parkway J.C. Napier 5:15 p.m., residential burglary, 60 block University Court 11:29 p.m., cutting/stabbing, 100 block Charles E. Davis Boulevard Joelton 3:01 p.m., residential burglary, 6200 block Old Hickory Boulevard Madison 9:27 a.m., residential burglary, 100 block Welworth Street 12:54 p.m., holdup/robbery, 2300 block North Gallatin Pike North 12:03 p.m., holdup/robbery, Buchanan Street and Dr. D.B. Todd Jr. Boulevard 6:29 p.m., holdup/robbery, 2600 block Jefferson Street 6:54 p.m., holdup/robbery, 30th Avenue North and Albion Street 7:10 p.m., shooting, I-65 South and Rosa L. Parks Boulevard 7:19 p.m., shooting, I-65 North and Rosa L. Parks Boulevard 10:14 p.m., cutting/stabbing, 1700 block Rosa L. Parks Boulevard Old Hickory 8:05 p.m., rape, Scenic View Road Priest Lake 4:12 p.m., residential burglary, 600 block Castlegate Drive 6:45 p.m., residential burglary, 300 block Schoolhouse Court Providence 8:32 p.m., holdup/robbery, 4400 block Nolensville Road South 4:21 a.m., holdup/robbery, 300 block Harding Place 8:16 a.m., residential burglary, 1000 block Patricia Drive 1:48 p.m., holdup/robbery, Dell Parkway 2:41 p.m., residential burglary, 9200 block Thomason Trail 4:33 p.m., residential burglary, 8400 block Lawson Drive Trinity Hills 4:05 p.m., nonresidential burglary, 400 block West Trinity Lane 6:33 p.m., residential burglary, 700 block Revels Drive Tusculum 8:09 a.m., kidnapping, 15500 block Old Hickory Boulevard 2:18 p.m., residential burglary, 4800 block Cimarron Way 2:38 p.m., holdup/robbery, 4700 block Nolensville Road 3:36 p.m., residential burglary, 100 block Chrishall Court 9:02 p.m., residential burglary, 4900 block Cimarron Way West 1:54 a.m., residential burglary, 5500 block Kentucky Avenue 6:41 a.m., holdup/robbery, 7100 block Charlotte Pike 8:09 a.m., holdup/robbery, 3700 block Hillsboro Pike 12:07 p.m., holdup/robbery, 5900 block Charlotte Pike 12:51 p.m., holdup/robbery, 1400 block Hynes Street 1:26 p.m., residential burglary, 6900 block Sonya Drive 1:27 p.m., holdup/robbery, 2800 block West End Avenue 2:04 p.m., residential burglary, 4500 block Tennessee Avenue 2:44 p.m., residential burglary, 100 block Woodmont Boulevard 4:39 p.m., holdup/robbery, 1500 block Church Street 6:01 p.m., shooting, 1200 block Medical Center Drive 8:57 p.m., residential burglary, 200 block Wildberry Lane 10:03 p.m., holdup/robbery, 4400 block Tennessee Avenue May 22 Belmont 2:05 p.m., shooting, 1000 block Acklen Avenue Bordeaux 8:25 a.m., residential burglary, 4400 block Sumatra Road 2:39 p.m., residential burglary, 2400 block Buena Vista Pike Central 4:58 a.m., residential burglary, 400 block North Second Street 12:32 p.m., holdup/robbery, 2300 block Brittany Drive Donelson 8:27 a.m., holdup/robbery, 2500 block Lebanon Pike East 4:40 p.m., shooting, 3100 block Robwood Drive 7:45 p.m., cutting/stabbing, 1300 block Jones Avenue 9:24 p.m., residential burglary, 300 block Gatewood Avenue Madison 12:54 p.m., cutting/stabbing, 500 block Charles Drive 1:59 p.m., residential burglary, 200 block Sealey Drive 5:49 p.m., residential burglary, 100 block Welworth Street North 1:28 p.m., residential burglary, 2300 block 14th Avenue North 6:41 p.m., residential burglary, 3900 block Alameda Street Priest Lake 1:38 p.m., residential burglary, 200 block Grovedale Trace Providence 12:24 a.m., holdup/robbery, 4900 block Edmondson Pike South 12:21 a.m., rape, Murfreesboro Pike 12:50 p.m., residential burglary, 800 block Murfreesboro Pike 3:04 p.m., residential burglary, 4200 block Sandstone Drive 7:04 p.m., holdup/robbery, 5300 block Mt. View Road West 2:30 p.m., cutting/stabbing, 5700 block Charlotte Pike 3:03 p.m., residential burglary, 6000 block Don Allen Avenue 10:03 p.m., residential burglary, 4600 block Kentucky Avenue Woodbine 7:25 a.m., residential burglary, 100 block Neese Drive 5:08 p.m., shooting, 3700 block Nolensville Road

Gang activity in suburbs acknowledged

Nashville crackdown has forced migration into nearby countiesBy CHRISTINA E. SANCHEZ • and MARIA GIORDANO (Tennessean) • April 28, 2008 Two weeks before the fatal shooting of a Franklin teenager in what appears to be a gang-related fight, Nashville police gave gang awareness training to Williamson County school faculty. The school officials' request in March for the training suggests a willingness to acknowledge, although not yet publicly, what they and local law enforcement had long been reluctant to admit: Gangs exist in suburbia. "Gangs have always been here, probably much longer than the Police Department was aware or recognized," said Sgt. Charles Warner, a detective with the Franklin Police Department. "We've started to see a slow increase. By no means is there an epidemic." Several smaller communities outside of Nashville have seen an increase over the past few years in gang presence and gang-related crime. Local police departments attribute gangs' migration to growth — and to Metro's aggressive police crackdown on street gangs in Nashville, which pushes criminal activity to outlying cities. But experts say that the gangs building bases near newer, pristine subdivisions lack the organization, hierarchy of power and carnage that are hallmarks of notorious gangs in Chicago or Los Angeles. "You have suburban communities surrounding a metro area, and gang activity does spill over sometimes," said John Moore, director of the National Youth Gang Center in Florida. "The gangs in the Nashville area are much more typical as a whole to the rest of the United States, but unlike places such as Chicago." They rarely deal drugs; petty thefts and gang-on-gang violence are traits of the suburban gang. Middle Tennessee's gang members are youths and adults, of different races and ethnicities. They wear signature colors, flash gang signs, have nicknames and mark their territory with graffiti. They join for reasons that range from false promises of the get-rich-quick gangster to the desire to have a "family." Tackling gang activity is necessary to keep it from escalating. Already about 10 percent to 15 percent of youth violence in Tennessee has gang ties, Moore said. "No city wants to admit that they have a gang problem, but you can't deal with it until you acknowledge it," he said. "These communities that are saying they have a gang problem are taking the first of 12 steps to deal with the problem. Conflicts can turn deadly Sometimes, the interaction of rival gangs turns violent and even deadly. Authorities believe an argument between members of different gangs on April 13 in Columbia, Tenn., had fatal consequences for Juan Castro, 16, of Franklin, and Patricia Garcia, 24, of Spring Hill. A group of men in a car pulled alongside the sport utility vehicle carrying Castro, Garcia and nine other people, and opened fire. No details have been released on what gangs were involved or what the argument was about. "We have enormous intelligence that this particular incident was gang related and that there are gangs in Maury and Williamson counties," said Kristin Helm, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. "We can't say how many gang members there are or that this gang is this. It's hard to know." Not all cities or law enforcement agencies track gang members or gangs. The Metro Police Department started a database in 2004, said Metro police Sgt. Gary Kemper. Metro logs all suspected gang members who get arrested in Davidson County into a database. Officers have recorded 4,700 gang members with 15 major gang names such as Bloods, Crips, SUR-13, MS-13 and dozens more subsets within those categories, Kemper said. Some of the gang members arrested in Davidson are from other counties, and in a recently prosecuted gang case — one of the largest in Middle Tennessee history — half the members of a gang known as MS-13 were from Wilson, Rutherford and Williamson counties, Kemper said. He sees more Hispanic gangs in Williamson such as SUR-13, a Mexican gang also known as surenos. In Rutherford, more Asian gang presence is felt with groups such as Asian Pride. "Just because a community has families that make a little more money doesn't make them exempt," Kemper said. Educators get training Awareness and training can teach communities and parents the signs to look for to know if their kids are involved in gang activity, Kemper said. In a rare meeting of two school boards in Williamson County last week, directors Becky Sharber of Williamson County Schools and David Snowden of the Franklin Special School District said that gang activity was a possibility and that they were taking steps to raise awareness. Administrators and staff are undergoing training to identify the signs and colors of gang members. Teachers are expected to get training later. Both leaders told board members that there was no significant activity now but that they were committed to dealing with the issue openly. Capt. Alan Laney of the Williamson County Sheriff's Office, who oversees resource officers in Williamson County schools, said they had not seen gang activity in schools until this past year. So far, the presence has been little more than fights between boys, he said. Nevertheless, Laney said officers have heard that Juan Castro was affiliated with a gang. "We have identified the student that was the victim and other students as being involved in gangs," he said. Some parents of students at Centennial High say the school was unfairly and unjustly targeted as having a "gang presence" simply because Castro went to school there. Franklin resident Darlene Johnson has two children at Centennial High School, one a senior and the other a sophomore. "Before they run scared and fear the worst, look at what the school is doing positively, like Challenge Day," Johnson said referring to an anti-conflict program that brings students closer together. "What people seem to be clinging to are the negativities," she said. School presence not seen Laney said there's little to suggest these gangs of young men are doing anything more than emulating the gang-member lifestyle. There's no evidence of illegal activity in the schools, Laney said. "We don't know what goes on outside of school," Laney said. "I can't say they have weapons." In the April 13 shooting that lead to the death of Castro and Garcia, police said, an AK-47 automatic assault rifle was used to fire at the sport utility vehicle in which Castro and Garcia were riding, Columbia police reports show. The firefight stemmed from a dispute at a birthday party in Columbia, though officials have declined to release what the fight was about. A 22-year-old Columbia man, Javoris Deray Sparkman, who was one of four people arrested in the shooting, claims to be a member of the Vikings, an offspring of a predominantly black gang known as Folk Nation. The Vikings have a presence in Maury, Davidson and Rutherford counties that sometimes spills into Williamson, authorities said. Pictures of Castro found on the Internet and circulated among his friends show him and others flashing hand signs associated with the Hispanic gang known as SUR-13. According to Insideprison.com, an independent research site on criminal justice issues, SUR-13 is a street gang that exists in all major cities. It's widely believed that such gangs originate in prisons, where membership affords protection from other inmate populations. In Franklin's Cadet neighborhood off Liberty Pike, where Juan Castro lived, few neighbors would comment publicly about any gang activity in the area because of fear. Many neighbors said they were well aware of an increase in police surveillance. A bright blue 13 on a stop sign in the neighborhood and more gothic-style writing on a drainage culvert in the Franklin neighborhood identify SUR-13. In Lebanon in Wilson County, police have seen similar signs of gang activity in federal housing. Two of the city's three murders last year are believed to be gang related, said Lebanon Police Chief Scott Bowen. While police have seen an increase in robberies and shootings that have gang connections, they have not heard of a real gang presence in the school system. Most of the gang members who commit crimes in Lebanon are not from there, he said. "It seems like when Metro cracks down, it pushes them to us," Bowen said. "We're seeing more and more people come up to our projects from Nashville to deal their drugs and do their business." Staff writer Mitchell Kline contributed to this report. Contact Christina E. Sanchez at cesanchez@tennessean.com or 726-5961. Contact Maria Giordano at mgiordano@tennessean.com or 771-5425.