19 cartridges found after gang-related, Lake Norman-area shooting, police say
“I want peace,” Patricia Turek said outside her home Tuesday in the Meadlowlark Glen apartments in Mooresville. “I don’t want gunfire.”
Two nights last weekend, she heard shots outside. The second night, she called 911, later looked outside and saw police already there. Police are a positive presence in her neighborhood, and she appreciates them, she said.
Police received seven phone calls around 9:04 p.m. Friday about gunfire in the area of Lark Glen Drive and arrived to find shell casings.
According to a police press release, detectives found that two males were “walking up Lark Glen Drive towards Selma Drive when they were fired upon by two subjects lying in wait by another apartment building.” The two males who were shot at ran away, and told detectives they did not fire back.
But surveillance footage showed one of the retreating males “fired a weapon as he ran back to an apartment on Lark Glen Drive.”
No one was injured. Police said they believe there was gang involvement.
But a woman and her child were in the parking lot, Police Chief Ron Campurciani said at a news conference Tuesday at Meadowlark Glen. Police found 19 cartridge shells on the public housing complex grounds, he said.
Police have made no arrest of either of the two people who opened fire on the two males who were ambushed.
The chief said police did detain the teen who returned fire, and the chief said he was upset that the state has not incarcerated him while he awaits juvenile court proceedings.
The chief did not release the teen’s age.
Because of his age, the teen is not allowed to have a gun, he said.
Officers found three firearms in the teen’s home, including one confirmed stolen and another with an altered serial number, Campurciani said.
The chief expressed dismay that when one of his officers called the N.C. Department of Public Safety’s Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention division to have the teen locked up prior to juvenile court proceedings, the officer was told the incident didn’t meet its criteria for incarceration.
“If this one incident isn’t enough for them to take a juvenile and secure him, I’m at a loss,” Campurciani said. “I’ve been doing this for 40 years. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
His officer wasn’t told what criteria police had to meet, Campurciani said, just like his officers haven’t been told each time they’ve tried to have teen suspects locked up after many other violent incidents the past two years.
Before news media cameras Tuesday, the chief unfurled a mound of computer printout sheets he said listed teen suspects in Mooresville the state would not incarcerate pre-hearing in violent cases, including robbery.
“These people work for the public, and they feel like they don’t have to give you an answer,” the chief said about Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention employees. “They don’t give us an answer. Maybe they’ll give you an answer.”
State considers a teen’s danger to others, spokesman says
State law prevents the division from discussing an underage person’s case, Matthew Debnam, communications officer with the N.C. Department of Public Safety, told The Charlotte Observer.
“However, when making decisions related to secure custody, staff with the Division of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention take very seriously any information addressing whether a juvenile presents a danger to public safety and respond accordingly,” Debnam said in an email.
The division considers a person’s “potential risks to public safety, the individualized needs of the juvenile and their risk of re-offending when making decisions about how to best address delinquency,” Debnam said.
District Court judges grant secure custody orders, he said, while state law delegates screening secure custody requests to the juvenile court counselor’s office.
“A common misconception about the juvenile justice system is that just because a juvenile is not immediately brought into secure custody the youth was not/will not be held accountable,” Debnam said. “This could not be further from the truth.”
Still, not detaining such suspects “creates all types of problems,” Campurciani said. “We could be back here an hour from now. Who knows? I don’t know.”