An 18-year-old Tonganoxie man was shot once in the leg early Friday after a fight in the 1000 block of Massachusetts Street, police said.
Jason K. Smith was taken to Lawrence Memorial Hospital shortly before 1 a.m. with a gunshot wound to his left thigh. He was treated and released Friday morning.
"I've got a great big hole in my leg, and I hope it's the last one I ever have," Smith said from his home Friday. "I saw a flash and heard a noise. It sounded like a huge firecracker. I couldn't even feel it. It just went numb."
Smith was shot once by a man armed with a semiautomatic handgun. The bullet entered the back of his leg and exited from the front side of his leg, near his groin, Smith said.
The shooting came after a fight that occurred among Smith and several others on a sidewalk in the 1000 block of Massachusetts Street. Smith and five other Tonganoxie residents, all between 18 and 24 years old, had been inside the Granada, 1020 Mass., when a woman in the group became involved in a fight inside the club.
Bouncers at the Granada escorted the woman outside the club, and Smith and the rest of his group followed. Once outside, the group continued to "be disorderly and cause trouble," according to witnesses, said Lawrence Police Det. John Lewis.
The woman who had been removed from the nightclub then became involved in another altercation with a group of three men from Topeka. One of the women from Tonganoxie hit a Topeka man, who then struck her.
"She was drunk and was mouthing off, that's true. But we weren't just going to let them do that to her," Smith said.
Smith and others in his group started to confront the man who hit the woman, and Smith said he landed a few punches before the suspect pulled a gun.
"I hit him a couple times, and then he just backed up," Smith said. That's when the suspect fired a single shot, injuring Smith.
Stolen gun
Smith nearly fainted and stumbled backward, reeling against a nearby parked vehicle and falling to the sidewalk, where the suspect approached him and tried to swing at him again, Smith said.
Lawrence Police Sgt. Tarik Khatib, who happened to be in his patrol car stopped at a traffic light at 10th and Massachusetts streets, heard the shot and saw Smith stumbling north along the sidewalk, Lewis said. Khatib then drove down toward Smith, told him to lie down and called for an ambulance.
The suspect fled, but police later found the discarded weapon, a .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol, lying on the sidewalk north of the Granada.
Police later discovered that the handgun had been reported stolen from Topeka, although the circumstances surrounding the theft weren't available Friday.
Lewis said that although the three Topeka men had been inside the Granada earlier that night, they had left about an hour before the Tonganoxie group, and weren't involved in the first altercation inside the club.
The suspect was an acquaintance of the two other Topeka men, Lewis said. Police detained and interviewed those two men but didn't arrest either.
All of the Topeka men were in their early 20s, Lewis said. The suspect was described as black, about 21 to 26 years old and 100 to 120 pounds. He had been wearing a tan, hip-length leather coat, Lewis said.
A father's concern
Gary Smith, Jason's father, said he learned of the shooting when he was awakened by a phone call from one of his son's friends. He said Jason was in good spirits despite some pain and discomfort.
"He can't really walk at all, but the bullet went through the muscle and didn't hit his bone or any major blood vessels."
And while thankful that the injuries weren't more serious, Gary Smith expressed concern that proper security measures weren't taken by the Granada, where the suspect had been before the shooting.
"It doesn't seem right that those guys could have had a gun and been inside there," Smith said.
An employee at the Granada, who wouldn't give his name, said doormen at the club rarely search patrons for weapons. He said it was impossible to determine whether the suspect had been armed inside the club, noting that doormen didn't use metal-detecting wands Thursday night.
Police didn't know whether the suspect had taken the handgun inside the club.
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