Concord Avenue double homicide leaves teenager dead—and neighbors fed up with gunfire

 

ELKHART, Ind. – Neighbors living around the 700 block of Concord Avenue are fed up after a shooting claimed the lives of two people late Sunday night.

“It’s a quiet, nice neighborhood,” said Sandy Shurn, who’s lived nearby for seven years. “But you do hear gunshots.”

Just before 11:00pm—Elkhart Police responded to calls of shots fired with injuries at 702 Concord Avenue and found a 15-year-old boy suffering from at least one gunshot wound.

The teen—whose identity has not been released—was rushed to Memorial Hospital in South Bend, where he died.

Alexis Jackson, 34, also suffered from at least one gunshot wound and arrived on his own at Elkhart General Hospital—just a mile and a half away from the shooting scene—where he also died.

One concerned neighbor, who wished to remain anonymous, heard the gunshots herself.

“I jumped up, got my gun and looked out the window and that’s when I’d seen two kids run out the patio door, and then they ran through the garages, in between the garages, this way,” she told me.

The neighbors here said this is far from the first time shots have been fired around 702 Concord Avenue.

“There’s been a lot of foot traffic in the past month and a half. And it’s been nothing but shots during the day,” said the concerned neighbor.

“I know I hear gunshots at least once a week,” Shurn said. “But most of the time it’s late at night, and it sounds like they’re shooting into the air.”

The concerned neighbor added, “Three weeks ago, there was an incident here too. Some boy, they were playing with guns, or, I don’t know what they were doing, but, they shot his self in their leg, in the foot. And then three weeks later, here we go.”

This latest incident—has her at wits’ end.

“I take care of my mother who has dementia and she is on hospice,” she told me. “Last night was confusing for her. All the police lights and stuff. She didn’t go to sleep until five o’clock—so I had to stay up all night to make sure she’s okay and keep her from being confused and anxious and everything else because she doesn’t know what’s going on from one second to the next.”

Shurn just wants everyone to put the weapons down.

“I don’t want to move. I just want it to get better,” she said. “I live with my boyfriend, I love my house, I love my neighborhood, I just think they need to get the guns off of the street.”

The Elkhart County Homicide Unit is handling the investigation.

They say there is currently no danger to the public, and if anyone knows anything about this shooting, they are urged to call the unit at 574-295-2825.

A GoFundMe has been set up by Jackson's family.