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| Shots Fired in Brief Inmate Escape |
| By Indianapolis Star |
| Published: 03/31/2003 |
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Pedestrians ducked and ran for their lives when gunfire broke out Downtown on March 18 as two prisoners tried to escape from a jail van. No one was seriously hurt. The inmates broke out of a Marion County jail vehicle, and one of them ran through a hotel and into a parking lot. He fought with an Indianapolis police officer in the lot, took his gun and fired several shots. The bullets hit two cars but missed people who were on the street outside Circle Centre mall. The trouble started just before 4 p.m. that day at Maryland and Meridian streets. The van, headed east on Maryland, was taking several men to the Marion County Jail and Lockup. The two men, apparently headed to the jail after spending time in state prisons, were chained and in the back seat of the vehicle, a slightly modified Ford E-350 van. The van had a steel grate behind the driver's seat and metal mesh over the windows. The men managed to slip through their bonds, kick out one of the van's rear windows, crawl through it and escape. The van slid to a stop in front of an IndyGo bus stop near Maryland and Delaware streets, where one of the men was quickly subdued by deputies. 'When I saw that, I knew there were going to be guns drawn,' said Yolanda Spaulding, who was waiting for a bus where the van halted. The second man ran to the west, cutting through the lobby of the Hampton Inn as deputies chased him. Joining the chase was Detective Randall Busic of the Indianapolis Police Department, who was working at Circle Centre as a security guard. Busic got the prisoner under control for a moment, but then the man fought with the officer and grabbed his 9 mm service pistol. 'The suspect had the cop's gun and he started firing,' said Hampton Inn employee Clay St. John. 'When the first shell went off, I was 10 feet away. That's when I ran.' The man managed to fire about five shots from Busic's gun before another person, described by police as a worker at a Downtown restaurant, helped the officer subdue the man. 'I wouldn't recommend that people do that,' said Sgt. Russell Burns, an IPD spokesman. The driver's-side window of one car in the parking lot was blown out, and another car was struck in the taillight. The incident happened just as commuters were heading home, and Downtown traffic was snarled for several hours. The shooting was the second involving gunfire from an IPD gun in the past week. Nathan E. Gillard, 27, was shot and killed by police when he pointed a toy gun at officers whom he had led on a foot chase from a store in the 800 block of Chester Avenue. |
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