TOLEDO, Ohio — Toledo Police are looking for whoever shot four people on Sunday, including a 12-year-old. It happened at the Weiler Homes at Leach Avenue. TPD said one adult victim remains in critical condition and three others, including the child, are stable but remain in the hospital.
This quadruple shooting now marks the fourth time this year WTOL 11 has covered shootings at the Weiler Homes, with many more incidents over the last few years.
City leaders responsible for the property said they're working to reduce the issues as violence continues to spill onto the resident's doorsteps.
WTOL returned to the Weiler homes on Monday, and while people could be seen going about their day, none of them were comfortable talking about Sunday's shooting, saying that anyone could be listening in this neighborhood.
It's a crime that TPD is still trying to get to the bottom of since they first responded on Sunday afternoon.
"As crews arrive they find a victim in the parking lot and learn that a shooting has occurred," said TPD officer Prince Flores.
That first victim was a 12-year-old, bleeding out on the asphalt. Then inside the actual crime scene, they found two others also suffering from bullet wounds.
Just when they thought they found all the injured, a fourth victim had been privately transported to a hospital.
It's the latest incident in what has been a violent year at the complex. Two people shot were in August, gunshots were exchanged and property was damaged in May, and a bullet wound sent a young girl to the hospital in critical condition in February.
"What troubles me is that you have kids that are put into this position where this kind of incident is happening with children around," said Jim Gross, vice president of public safety for Lucas County Metropolitan Housing Authority, the owners of the Weiler Homes and other low-income housing in the area.
Gross said he and his team have been working hard to try to reduce these violent episodes.
"We have mobile patrol that's out patrolling all of our properties," said Gross. "We've created a youth service officer that's now getting engaged with the youth. We've created the community resource officer that works with Toledo Police to put on community service programming."
But LMHA is in charge of dozens of low-income residences and their mobile patrol has a total of just eight members to survey all of their properties.
Gross said they've teamed up with the Toledo mayor's community anti-violence initiative, combining groups like TPD, Toledo Public Schools and city leaders to try and solve these issues at the root.
"There's a lot of groups that are coming together to try to put together a plan on how to address the youth violence, how to address gun violence in general to try and lower that within the city," said Gross.
Gross said there have been some exciting ideas, but they likely won't have a clear plan for action until the end of the year.
"Hopefully once it gets running, it will address a lot of the issues pretty quickly," said Gross.
In the meantime, Gross said they've also upgraded their camera systems to high-definition cameras and were able to hand that video over to the police department in the investigation.
If you have any information on the shooting, you can call Toledo Police or call/text Crime Stoppers at 419-255-1111.