GREENWOOD, Ind. (AP) — Authorities have made an arrest in the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old boy who was gunned down Thursday morning while waiting at a suburban Indianapolis school bus stop by an assailant who fled the scene on foot, officials said.
The shooting about 7 a.m. Thursday prompted officials to place nearby schools on lockdown in Greenwood, a city just south of Indianapolis, where in July a 20-year-old man shot five people, three fatally, in a mall’s food court before an armed shopper fatally shot him.
Greenwood Assistant Chief Matthew Fillenwarth said the shooting Thursday occurred at a bus stop in the Summerfield Housing addition. The shooting victim, a sophomore at Whiteland Community High School, identified by the Clark-Pleasant Community School Corporation as Temario Stokes Jr., was waiting there with several other students when he was shot. Fillenwarth said the assailant approached, wearing a black hoodie.
“The suspect came running up towards the victim and the other witnesses ran. The victim was shot multiple times by the suspect,” Fillenwarth said at a briefing, adding that the suspect fled on foot.
After a search that included the use of a helicopter and drones, authorities arrested an 18-year-old man on a preliminary charge of murder, according to the Johnson County Sheriff’s office.
Fillenwarth said the police believe the shooting victim appears to have been “targeted by the suspect specifically.”
After the shooting the victim’s mother, grandmother and other relatives went to the shooting scene.
Fillenwarth said the Greenwood Police Department was working with law enforcement from Johnson County, Indiana State Police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to investigate the shooting.
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