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There was an all too familiar scene in Madison this weekend. Police Chief Mike Koval is amazed no innocent bystanders were hurt in the latest exchange of gunfire, outside a south side restaurant early Sunday morning.
“I don’t know how we can continue to live like this,” Koval said of the 3:00 a.m. shots fired incident in the parking lot of La Hacienda restaurant. “The lot was filled, the restaurant was filled. How this sort of ‘shootout at the O.K. Corral’ did not affect more people is nothing sort of a miracle.”
Two men were hit – one was grazed by a bullet and another drove himself to the hospital with a life-threatening injury. Investigators recovered more than a dozen spent shell casings at the scene, and Koval said they aren’t getting any cooperation from anyone – including the two men who were shot.
“When MPD arrives at these things, whether they are victims, witnesses, contacts, family members, nobody seems to know anything about anything,” Koval said. “These are not random. These are targeted, these are specific. These are people who know each other at some level.”
Koval said it’s too soon to know if Saturday’s incident is related to three recent gun homicides.
WIBA contributed to this report
