West Central shooting leaves man hospitalized, neighbors fuming

A man was shot Tuesday morning in West Central Spokane, at the same house where a shooting wounded two men in late July.

A federally funded police task force is investigating the scene at 2107 W. Sharp Ave. Officer Teresa Fuller, a spokeswoman for the Spokane Police Department, said the call came in just after 8 a.m. A man was hospitalized with serious injuries.

Fuller said she couldn’t elaborate on the ongoing investigation, but neighbors and witnesses said the shooting fits into a long history of violence, drug deals and gang activity at the house.

Brent Yardley, who lives a block west on Sharp, said the home has been a problem in the neighborhood for 30 years.

And on Tuesday morning, neighbor Wendy Adams said she saw a bald man with a gunshot wound laying face-down in the front yard of the problem house. She said she was walking her 5- and 7-year-old children to school, and her son asked, “Mommy, why is that man sleeping on the floor?”

“Every day I have to walk my kids past this house, and there’s always people just hanging out in the yard,” Adams said. “We always go around it (on the other side of the street) because I don’t know if something is going to happen right there.”

Adams said a woman was standing near the wounded man, but there was little commotion.

Michael Trout, who lives across the street, said he was sitting on his front porch late Monday night when a bald man parked a red car at the corner of Sharp and North Belt Street. Trout said the man sat in the car for 20 to 30 minutes, watching the house where the shooting occurred.

Miranda Murinko, who doesn’t live in the neighborhood, said she was in a nearby Super C convenience store shortly after the shooting and overheard two men talking about the victim.

The men, according to Murinko, said, “He got it coming to him.”

After an early-morning shooting on July 30, police arrived at the house to find two wounded men, one with life-threatening injuries. Police have not said if they believe the two shootings are related. Fuller couldn’t immediately say if anyone has been charged for the first shooting.

The woman who owned the house died in May, and Fuller said her family plans to evict the tenants on Thursday. Neighbors said at least half a dozen men and women live there.

Police are asking anyone with information who hasn’t already been contacted by detectives to call Crime Check at (509) 456-2233.

The shooting is under investigation by the Spokane Regional Safe Streets Task Force, a collaborative of local, state and federal agencies that targets gangs, violent criminals and upper-level drug traffickers.