Two more charged in Tuesday's shooting spree

Charges against two more suspects in Tuesday’s gangland-style, rolling shooting spree indicate that the gun battle started as an effort to retaliate for an incident the night before. Tyrone Fleming, 30, and Mark Lee, 19, are each charged with four counts of attempted second-degree murder and one count of using a firearm to commit a felony.
Brandon Johnson, 16, was charged earlier this week with attempted second-degree murder.

“They chose to recklessly shoot at one another to settle an ongoing dispute,” police spokeswoman Monique Martin wrote in an e-mail Friday.

A police report also suggests that the incident was a tussle between members of the Vice Lords and Grape Street Crips street gangs.

According to a police affidavit and other police reports, Lee, fellow suspect Johnson, 16, and another male believed a person nicknamed “Psycho” was responsible for shooting up a house Monday at 2542 Lyndale, where Johnson’s grandmother lives.

The three went Tuesday to Fleming’s house at 2603 Snowden, which they believed was connected to “Psycho,” and one of them knocked on the door at 1:15 p.m.

A woman refused to open the door, then looked out a window as the driver and passenger in a white Toyota Camry opened fire on the house, striking it more than a dozen times.

The woman and three children all under age 3 were inside, but nobody was hurt.

The suspects drove off eastbound on Snowden.

The reports don’t indicate what happened next, but they paint a picture of chaos between 1:15 and 1:30:

Two men in a black Buick Riviera drove down Lyndale, one of them leaning out the window and spraying Johnson’s grandmother’s house with bullets.

A woman who was driving a gold Pontiac Bonneville told officers Fleming’s silver Pontiac Grand Am got behind her at Jackson and Lamphier, and a passenger started shooting at her car.

Johnson was a passenger in the Bonneville with another male and a female. The reports don’t indicate how Johnson got from the Camry to the Bonneville.

The driver told police she lurched out into traffic at Summer and Hudson as the shooting continued, striking a minivan and pickup truck. The Grand Am left the scene.

Johnson and the other male — who are identified in a police report as Vice Lords — jumped out and hid while Johnson called his mother, who came to pick them up in a black Mercedes, police said.

Police found two handguns at the scene, and several bullet holes in the wrecked Bonneville, along with shell casings in the street.

Witnesses also told police that people in two cars shot at each other in the 3000 block of Guernsey, one of the gunmen hanging out the sunroof of a black Mercedes. A shot crashed through an office window at Buckeye Technologies, 1001 Tillman.

Officers found a black Mercedes at 2542 Lyndale and took Johnson into custody. He had a non-critical gunshot wound. Another suspect ran from police at the scene.

Police stopped the white Camry at 2637 Tutwiler and took Lee into custody. Officers found shell casings from two types of guns in the car.

Police are still looking for five more suspects.