Tyrel Wheeler is the city's 11th homicide victim
View full sizeA Springfield police office walks back to his cruiser on Washington Street. Behind him is the scene where a 16-year-old shooting victim had been found in the road.SPRINGFIELD – Sixteen-year-old Tyrel Wheeler, shot three times Thursday afternoon and found in a Forest Park neighborhood intersection shortly after he got out of a moving car that he had been driving, died Sunday at Baystate Medical Center.
Police Sgt. John M. Delaney said that Wheeler, who had been in critical condition at Baystate, was taken off life support Sunday afternoon.
Police continue to probe the shooting which resulted in the city’s 11th homicide of the year. “It’s progressing,” Delaney, aide to Commissioner William J. Fitchet, said of the investigation.
Delaney said that Wheeler was the driver and sole occupant of the car. Witnesses told police that Wheeler fell or jumped out of the car at the corner of Meredith and Washington streets and that the car continued on its own until it hit a parked vehicle near 92 Washington St.
Investigators have yet to determine where the shooting occurred. Witnesses did not report hearing any gunfire and the city’s ShotSpotter audio surveillance system did not pick any up, Delaney said.
The lack of a ShotSpotter alert indicates that the shooting could have occurred inside a building or a vehicle, Delaney said.
Based on evidence inside car, however, it’s clear that the victim was in the car for some time after he was shot and before he exited, Delaney said.
Police, a short time before, had responded to a report of a man seen running on nearby Draper Street. It’s not clear, however, whether that incident was related to the shooting, Delaney said.
Wheeler did not have a license and the car that he was driving, a silver Honda, belongs to his mother, Delaney said.
Wheeler is the third Springfield male, and the second teenager, to lose is life to gunfire over the last week.
Police said James Rosario, 18, was shot to death around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, just as a large party was breaking up at his home at 88 Edgeland St. in the Forest Park neighborhood.
Rosario died from multiple gunshot wounds to his chest, head and stomach, becoming the city’s 10th homicide victim.
Delaney said Rosario was shot inside the house, and that his parents were not home at the time. He said the shooting was over a “minor pushing match” that escalated in the victim being shot and killed.
The homicide follows the July 3 killing of 38-year-old Raul E. Vera, who was shot to death on Lincoln Street in the city’s McKnight neighborhood shortly before 7:15 p.m.
Delaney said the three killings are not related. He said, however, that investigators believe all three are gang-related.
The deaths of Rosario and Vera remain under investigation, Delaney said.