A man is fighting for his life after being shot during an attempted robbery early Friday in Highland Heights, with Memphis police saying he was simply dropping off a friend so she could grab her purse when a stranger demanded he hand over his belongings. Officers found the victim sitting in the driver’s seat of a blue Saturn Vue near the intersection of Pacific Avenue and Baltic Street, suffering from a single gunshot wound, before he was rushed to a hospital in critical condition.
According to WREG, officers responded to the area at 2:47 a.m. after receiving a call that a man had been shot. Police say the victim had driven a friend to a home on Pacific Avenue so she could pick up her purse when an unknown man approached his vehicle from behind. A green pickup truck pulled up near the Saturn at the same time, and the man demanded that the victim give it up before firing a shot and fleeing north on Baltic Street, police said. Officers who arrived on scene rendered aid until an ambulance could transport the victim to the hospital.
Police say the same unknown man also demanded money from a witness who was in the process of getting back into the victim’s vehicle. The suspect fled the scene afterward, and the driver of the green pickup truck has not been identified. As of the report, police had provided no arrest information, and WREG described the story as still developing.
A Neighborhood With a Troubled Recent History
Highland Heights falls under the jurisdiction of the Memphis Police Department’s Tillman Station Precinct, also called the Central Precinct, based at 426 Tillman Street and responsible for patrolling and investigating violent crime across the neighborhood, according to the Memphis Police Department. The area has seen a string of violent incidents in recent years, including a fatal robbery shooting on Faxon Avenue just weeks earlier that Hoodline previously covered in depth. In that case, task force officers arrested a 19-year-old suspect for first-degree murder after apprehending him during a traffic stop on Knight Arnold Road, per the U.S. Marshals Service…