LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The day after Louisville's 99th and 100th homicide victims of 2020 were shot and killed near Iroquois Park, the Louisville Metro Police Department called on the community to come together to help end the "unprecedented amount of violence."
Lt. Donnie Burbrink, who heads the LMPD Homicide Unit, said the two young men "senselessly murdered" Monday is another sign of a difficult year.
"Unfortunately, this has become an all too common occurrence in 2020," Burbrink said. "We've been inundated with issues we've never experienced, from COVID to protests."
Tuesday evening, the two young men who were shot and killed were identified by the Jefferson County Coroner's Office as 16-year-old Adrian Maddox-Bell and 15-year-old Jaden Maddox.
Louisville also saw it's 101st shooting Tuesday evening when a man was shot and killed in the Russell neighborhood.
And it's not just homicides that are seeing a spike, Burbrink said. So far this year, there have been 360 non-fatal shootings in Louisville, a 119 percent increase from 2019.
"We truly don't know," he said, pondering the reasons behind the violence. "Conflict resolution seems to be a thing of the past."
Burbrink tried to debunk two rumors he said the department has heard on the street and seen on social media. First, he said the fatal shooting Sunday on Interstate 264 was not a "DC sniper-type attack." He said detectives don't know why gunfire erupted between cars on the expressway, but it appears to have been an isolated incident.
Secondly, Burbrink addressed the case of David Boggs, the Prospect resident who was shot and killed in west Louisville last week. Many people, particularly on social media, have wondered whether Boggs was carjacked near his home and driven to the Shawnee neighborhood, where the shooting took place. Burbrink flatly denied the rumor, saying the reason he was speaking Tuesday was a result of "seeing escalation and working tirelessly to address it."
He said LMPD doesn't have any new information in Boggs' case or any suspect information.
"We are throwing every resource we have ... at all of our cases," he said.
Burbrink said of the 101 homicides in the city, detectives have solved 31. Of the 360 non-fatal shootings, they've solved 40.
Related Stories:
- Authorities identify two teens who died in shooting, crash on New Cut Road
- 1 man shot and killed in Russell neighborhood
- 2 dead, 2 in critical condition following shooting on New Cut Road
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