Little Rock police believe three shootings that left six teenagers injured in a one-week period a month ago are related, a department spokesman said.
Investigators also think a fourth shooting -- in which a Little Rock house was hit several times but no one was hurt -- is connected to the previous three shootings.
The four shootings span from Sept. 30 to Oct. 7 and are all still under investigation, said Lt. Steve McClanahan, spokesman for the Little Rock Police Department. Investigators think retaliation could be the intent behind some of the shootings, he said.
Police have made no arrests in connection with the shootings, but McClanahan said the department might have some people of interest. He said police have encountered a lack of cooperation from witnesses in investigating the four shootings.
"Sometimes people won't talk for a number of reasons," he said.
The first shooting came Sept. 30 when three teenagers were shot on West 13th Street, about a block away from Little Rock Central High School, at about 9:40 p.m., police said. When police arrived, they found a 17-year-old victim sitting in the driver's seat of a vehicle and Bilal Muhammad, 19, and Bilijah Muhammad, 18, lying in the street with gunshot wounds, police said.
The next of the four shootings came less than a week later, on Oct. 6. Police found a 15-year-old victim lying in the middle of the street near Montclair Road and Cone Lane, less than 2 miles from the shooting on West 13th Street.
The unidentified 15-year-old told police that two black males had arrived near 1624 Cone Lane and fired at him several times.
Hours later, officers were called to a shooting about three blocks away near the intersection of West 16th and Peyton streets at 8:42 p.m., police said.
Willie Abrenjelon, 19, and an unidentified 16-year-old were shot and dropped off at UAMS Medical Center, according to a police report. Police found the primary crime scene in the 4300 block of West 16th Street.
A day after the two Oct. 6 shootings, police were called to 1616 W. 24th St. at 11:22 p.m. for a report of shots fired, police said.
Several people were outside the residence and told police their house was "shot up." Nobody was hurt at the scene, police said, but there were several bullet holes in the residence.
The people said they did not know who shot at them, and police noted in their report that a number of the people were "not surprised at all with the shooting."
Officers found approximately 40 shell casings from a rifle at the intersection of West 17th and Marshall streets, located seven blocks north of the residence, police said.
Ken Richardson, Little Rock city director for Ward 2, said last month that the violence during that one-week period in neighboring Ward 1 was reminiscent of the atmosphere in the 1990s, when gang activity in Little Rock gained national attention.
Yet he said gang activity does not seem to be the motivation behind these most recent violent crimes.
"I don't want to get back to the early '90s where these actions are normalized," he said.
He said that if a person is born into a community of drugs and violent crime, he is more likely to replicate those actions when he grows up.
"We don't want this to be something that our young people grow up expecting," Richardson said.
McClanahan said the department's special investigations division is helping detectives with the investigation.
Metro on 11/01/2016