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Last updated on Monday, April 1, 2013
(FORT WAYNE) - In less than 36 hours, four separate shootings in the Fort Wayne area killed two men and badly wounded two others, authorities said.
Archie Ingersoll of The Journal Gazette reports that two of the shootings happened Sunday.
Early that morning, a man was shot and critically injured during a fight in the parking lot of a nightclub. And that evening, a man with a gunshot wound was brought to a hospital in a car and later died, according to city police.
The other man who died was identified as Robert W. Kanyuh, 65, the Allen County Coroner's office said. Kanyuh was shot Saturday morning in the first of the four shootings.
In what was reported as a home invasion, a man came into Kanyuh's house in the 13600 block of Lafayette Center Road in southwest Allen County and shot him in the abdomen before leaving in a car, the sheriff's department said.
Emergency workers were called to the home at 11:38 a.m., and Kanyuh was taken from the scene in serious condition, the sheriff's department said. He died just after 10 that night at Lutheran Hospital, the coroner's office said.
The coroner's office performed an autopsy and ruled that Kanyuh's death was a homicide. It was the first one the sheriff's department has investigated in 2013. Meanwhile, spates of violence in Fort Wayne have led to 12 confirmed homicides so far this year.
On Sunday, Cpl. Jeremy Tinkel, a sheriff's department spokesman, said he had no new information about the shooting of Kanyuh. Earlier, Tinkel said the relationship, if any, between the intruder and Kanyuh was not known. Nor was it clear whether the intruder forced his way into the house or whether anything was stolen.
The area's second shooting took place Saturday afternoon near Weisser Park in south Fort Wayne.
Shortly after 1:30 p.m., police and medics found a man with gunshot wounds in the 3300 block of South Hanna Street, and he was taken to a hospital in critical condition, police said.
Investigators believe the victim was walking on a sidewalk when an armed man wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt ran from between houses and started firing.
The third shooting happened in the lot of Early Birds Ultralounge as the north-side club was closing about 3 a.m. Sunday, police said.
During a fight in the lot, which involved several people, shots rang out. Soon afterward, a man with a gunshot wound arrived at a hospital in a private vehicle. He was in critical condition, police said.
Early Birds shares a building with the YOLO Event Center at 4201 N. Wells St., near Coliseum Boulevard. Phone messages left for the owner were not returned Sunday.
The fourth shooting was reported at 7:06 p.m. after someone drove a man with a gunshot wound to Parkview Hospital at East State Boulevard and Randallia Drive, said officer John Chambers, a police spokesman. The victim was transferred to another hospital in critical condition and later died, he said.
Chambers said the victim or the people who brought him to Parkview Hospital told police the shooting occurred somewhere outside in south Fort Wayne, near Smith and Oxford streets. Officers canvassed the neighborhood but found no evidence of a shooting, he said.
"Right now, we're unclear exactly where it actually happened," Chambers said, adding that detectives were interviewing potential witnesses.
He said it was too early to tell whether the three city shootings are related. The identities of those victims were not released.
Investigators have not determined a motive in any of the shootings, and no arrests have been made.
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