Springfield police identify shooting victim killed in Six Corners
Thursday, October 16, 2008
By GEORGE GRAHAM
ggraham@repub.com
SPRINGFIELD - Springfield police said Wednesday they have several leads in the slaying of a 28-year-old city man in the Six Corners neighborhood Tuesday night and are continuing to investigate.
The man was identified as Alberto L. Rodriguez, of 2309 Main St., Capt. Robert T. McFarlin said.
"There are several leads and the investigation is ongoing," McFarlin said.
Police believe Rodriguez was shot at least three times while in a white Toyota outside Pine Street Market around 9 p.m. After the shooting, he drove a couple of blocks to Ashley Street and hit a parked sedan, pushing it into a parked pickup truck in front of 21 Ashley St.
Emergency personnel put the man in an ambulance and started CPR at the scene. However, Rodriguez was pronounced dead on arrival at Baystate Medical Center, said McFarlin, head of the Springfield Police Department Criminal Investigations Unit.
"He died of gunshot wounds to the back," McFarlin said.
It was the second shooting in the city in four days. Early Friday morning, a 22-year-old man was shot five times while walking on Main Street in the South End. He survived the attack.
The slaying is the 11th in Springfield this year, following the death of Santino T. Kuang, a Chicopee resident and Sudanese native, who was stabbed during a robbery last month. There were 17 homicides last year at this time, and 20 in 2007 overall.
Sgt. John M. Delaney, executive aide to Police Commissioner William J. Fitchet, said the police dispatcher was alerted to shots being fired by the department's ShotSpotter system. This is a series of listening devices set up around the city that records shots being fired and triangulates their position, giving the dispatcher the exact location within seconds.
ShotSpotter can differentiate between a gunshot and a car backfiring, Delaney said. It alerts the dispatcher to the number of shots fired and sometimes the caliber of the weapon.
Tuesday night, the device told police the shots were fired at 157 Pine St., Delaney said. Police arrived quickly and found Rodriguez around the corner in a car at 21 Ashley St.
Police said Rodriguez was involved in a domestic incident earlier in the day on Florence, near the scene of the shooting. "It is unclear at this time if the murder and the incident are related," Delaney said in a statement.
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