Man killed in shooting in Boulder Station parking lot

Eric Leake

Friday, Oct. 8, 2004 | 9:35 a.m.

A car chase ended in gunshots and death in the Boulder Station parking lot, where three people tried to escape pursuers Thursday afternoon, Metro Police said.

In the end, two men were shot, one of them fatally. This morning, police were searching for two cars used by the shooters.

Metro Police Lt. Tom Monahan said the ordeal began with an argument at the Town and Country motel at Tropicana Avenue and Boulder Highway. The argument became a car chase down Boulder Highway, stopping momentarily at a 7-Eleven, where it turned violent, Monahan said.

He said the chase resumed along Boulder Highway as a group of men in a silver Dodge Neon and a large sedan, possibly a Mercury Cougar, followed three people in a Nissan Sentra.

"They kept jumping out of this car and I heard them yelling before I saw anything," said a witness, who asked not to be named.

She watched at a traffic light as four "real aggressive" men got out of the sedan and started toward a man in the Nissan.

The light changed and the chase continued.

"In an effort to seek refuge, the driver pulled into the Boulder Station parking lot," Monahan said. "At that point the confrontation that had been mostly verbal became quite violent."

Monahan said the men who were chasing the car got out in the parking lot and started attacking one of the Nissan passengers. They pulled a gun, and the passenger and the driver were shot. A woman who was also in the car was not injured.

The passenger, who Monahan said is in his early 20s, was taken to University Medical Center. The driver, said to be in his late 40s or early 50s, drove into a parked motorcycle and car before dying in the parking lot.

His name was being withheld until his family could be notified.

Henry Elmer was standing with an advertisement sign along Boulder Highway next to the lot. "I heard a boom, boom, boom and then the crash," he said.

"I dropped my sign and ran over. ... A guy got out of the car, his arm was hanging and all bloody, hollering, 'They shot me.' " Elmer said.

Witnesses told police that between four and eight men were in the two pursuing cars. Monahan said the Dodge Neon has tinted windows. The Mercury sedan is described as cream-colored, lowered, with a dark brown roof and custom rims.