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Two Drive-By Apartment Shootings in Two Weeks in Aberdeen

I generally avoid crime-of-the-week coverage, but this crime has happened twice in Aberdeen in two weeks. First, on the night of Wednesday, August 31, someone fired multiple shots at the Rockford apartment building, just a couple blocks from my house here in the northwest part of town. Then just after midnight, Thursday, September 8, there was another drive-by shooting, with multiple shots fired at the Foxridge Apartments over on the east side.

The Aberdeen Police Department located a person of interest in the first shooting, Jason Aaron Elmore, age 36, and arrested him for a variety of drug charges and parole violation last week, but they have not announced any connection between Elmore and the first shooting. Yesterday the APD released video from surveillance cameras at Bethlehem Lutheran Church (I guess it’s not just God watching over us) showing a “vehicle of interest” that was in the church parking lot at the time of the September 8 shooting:

All I can say to aid the investigation is, it wasn’t me!

The shootings have injured no one. No evidence has reached the public of a pattern of personal targets; the shared scenario—both shootings in the dark, both on the same late-night work shift of late Wednesday/early Thursday, both involving multiple shots fired from outside at multiple apartments—suggests mere dangerous vandalism for kicks. City councilman Clint Rux thinks the shootings are drug-related.

For crazy numerical coincidence, consider this: the August 31 shooting involved eleven shots fired at 11:11 p.m. at 11th Avenue and North 2nd. The September 8 shooting involved “approximately 10 gunshots in quick succession” at 12:26 a.m…. and the digits of that time add up to 11. Hmmm… Pythagorean cultists at work?

One bullet in the Foxridge shooting went through a five-year-old girl’s bedroom window. Her dad is hoping to move into a new apartment by this weekend. Moving may remove the family from a place with a scary memory (and that’s all the reason a dad needs), but given the seeming randomness of the crime, it doesn’t seem one can say any one location in town is safer than another.

One neighbor recommends we all get firearms and “do some practicing.” Somehow I don’t think the sound of more target practice around town and more people walking around armed after eleven p.m. is going to stop this particular crime. Besides, we can’t really act on that recommendation, because didn’t Barack Obama take all of our guns away?

Even with a possible pattern developing, this is why I don’t like crime-of-the-week news stories. We speculate on fuzzy fragments of evidence, we work up fear, but we don’t really get solid recommendations for ongoing public policy. So we wait to see if the police find the eleventh (!) bullet at Foxridge or the joyriders taking potshots at rental units in Aberdeen.

10 Comments

  1. Rorschach 2016-09-09 13:13

    If people would just pay their pharmaceutical bills there would be less of this everywhere. FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, people!!

  2. mike from iowa 2016-09-09 13:48

    Be a hell of a note for someone to accidently get offed because of a prank. Kids nowadays don’t seem to have the same concerns for other’s welfare. Doesn’t seem to bother many of them that their parents are financially responsible for damages for minors. Ah, maybe these drive-bys were just a bad dream.

  3. Don Coyote 2016-09-09 14:06

    Yikes! You’re fast becoming another South Side Chicago.

  4. jerry 2016-09-09 14:15

    A 36 year old, should have left the basement by now, when will he finally graduate high school?

  5. MC 2016-09-09 18:32

    Cory you know I am strong advocate for people using firearms for self-defense. However, in this case, it may not be the best option.
    An unknown car, with unknown occupants, drives by an apartment building, and fires an unknown firearm, and an unknown number of times at the apartment building and then drives off to an unknown location.
    About the only thing we know is we don’t know a whole lot.

    In this case having an active and visible neighborhood watch, armed with cell phones, cameras and working with the police will do more to stop these kinds of shootings then having someone sulking in the bushes with a AR-15.

    There is a time and place for an armed response, this isn’t one of them

  6. Darin Larson 2016-09-09 19:51

    Come on MC, I thought the time and the place for a firearm is all the time and in every place! Just ask Stace! Otherwise, it’s nothing but a gun-free zone where the bad guys are armed and the good guys are unarmed.

    Stace would tell you that what you need is more people walking around with guns at all hours waiting for their chance to spring into action and return fire. No, they don’t need to sulk in the bushes. Walk tall and proud and open carry! Bring in vigilantes, err I mean vigilant people, with weapons and these punks firing into apartments will soon be full of lead.

    MC, you say it may not be the best option this time to have citizens walking around with firearms. What do you mean? Are you going soft on us, son? Are we going to have to report you to the NRA and have your membership card taken from your cold dead hands? Now come on, never admit that guns aren’t the answer! Guns are always the answer and we don’t even need to know what the question is!

    There is nothing like a bunch of untrained, trigger happy, hyped up, amateur, SWAT wannabees stumbling around in the dark to make us all feel better and deter families from feeling threatened. Just be sure to let everyone know what the good guys look like so they don’t accidentally shoot each other. Is there going to be a secret pass word like for sentries on guard duty during war time. At least the next time the shooting starts, there’ll be a good chance that the bullets won’t just fly into one building. The bullets will be flying in all directions into many buildings. That is what real security looks like. Something resembling Aleppo.

  7. Douglas Wiken 2016-09-09 20:04

    And, shoot back at the thugs and guess who will be charged with reckless discharge of firearms, etc. etc.

  8. T 2016-09-09 20:36

    Been gone catching up on some news… Is this for real? 11 shot consistency is probably jam like a ruger 10/22 is notorious for problems jamming after 10 or just a bad firing pin, what was the “bullet”? This is crazy stuff for Aberdeen

  9. grudznick 2016-09-09 20:44

    Mr. PP has news about one of the policemen who apprehended these bad fellows being one of those insaner than most ones in the legislatures. Probably the least effective in the legislatures outside of Mr. Nelson, but clearly an effective police officer and that is what we need more of.

  10. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-09-11 09:33

    Sensibility from MC! Thank you!

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