After shootout in Belleville neighborhood, residents turn to council for answers
Following a shooting in their neighborhood, residents of North Charles Street have turned to the Belleville City Council and asked them to do more about crime.
Just before 10 p.m. on Friday night, police were called to the 600 block of North Charles Street for a report of shots fired, Lt. Todd Keilbach of the Belleville Police Department said. Residents in the area told the city council on Monday that they believed it was a rolling shootout between two people.
No one was injured during the shooting, but there was several reports of property damage, Keilbach said.
Tracy Richwine, who lives on the street, said her truck was hit 15 times and is probably totaled, that her boat trailer had been shot, that the back window of her family’s other truck had been shot out and that their garage door had been hit twice. Another man who lives on the street, Pastor Delaron Douglas, said a bullet came through his window and hit the spot in his living room where he had been sitting.
Keilbach said that police had one person in custody as of Monday, but that no one had been charged. The investigation is ongoing, he said.
Johnny Kicklighter, who lives on the street and has been a Belleville resident for 26 years, said his wife and grandson were inside their home at the time of the shooting, watching “Spiderman.”
“Had the (perpetrator) been just 30 degrees to the left, the bullet would have penetrated the window of my house and struck my grandchild,” he said at the meeting.
Gigi Dowling Urban, who has friends on the street, said she reached out to alderwomen Carmen Duco and Jane Pusa following the shooting. Pusa hadn’t replied to her by Monday night, but Duco tried to reassure her by saying that “these types of crimes are normally not random and are usually drug related or domestic disputes” — a fact Dowling Urban said she took “no comfort in.”
Mayor Mark Eckert said that the city would “get to the bottom of it.”
“We’re not giving up, and we don’t have this as a regular, but we’ve had a few situations... Recently, the problems we’ve had have not been random, we’ll say it that way. The people know each other,” Eckert said.
During the meeting, Richwine wondered why there had been no media coverage of the shooting. Eckert told her that he doesn’t have control over the local media and stated that some outlets were not staffed during the weekends.
The Belleville News-Democrat has a staff reporter in the newsroom daily until at least 7 p.m.
The Belleville Police Department’s most recent online “calls of service” blotter only shows crimes reported until Oct. 11. Eckert told residents that Chief William Clay had penned a statement to residents of the neighborhood. Calls to Clay’s office were not returned as of Tuesday afternoon. Eckert said he had no further comment on the shooting.
Dowling Urban suggested the city put together a citizen task force of representatives from the police, city council and citizens from each ward in the city “to assist in providing direction and oversight.” She also recommended that municipal leaders reach out to residents in response to crimes like Friday’s shooting with a status of the investigation and referrals to agencies or resources available to assist them.
Assistant Police Chief Matt Eiskant said during the meeting that residents who had property damage during the North Charles Street shooting could reach out to the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, which can reimburse victims of violent crimes as part of the Crime Victim Compensation Act.
“I’m so thankful that none of us were hurt,” said another woman who lives on the street but was not home at the time of the shooting. “It was just property. It could have been much worse. I just hope there will be some earnest effort in making some changes in our neighborhood to make it safer for people who actually own property and have invested and made our choice to be in Belleville.”
Eckert said the city would have “extra eyes” out in the neighborhood.
“This is terrible once, we need to do everything in our power to keep it from happening twice.”
This story was originally published October 22, 2019 at 5:28 PM.
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