Police taped off a crime scene after a shooting shortly after 5 p.m. today on Wicox Blvd. A black SUV sat with its windows shot out at the corner of Wilcox Boulevard and North Holtzclaw Avenue early Saturday night as officers blocked off the scene with cruisers and stretched caution tape across the road.
Glass littered the street and several small crowds of people craned their necks from porches and along the sidewalk, saying to one another that they had heard multiple shots and came to see what happened.
An unidentified man yelled to police officers.
He shouted repeatedly, "Is my mama all right?"
Officers told him the victims already had been transported to Erlanger hospital.
Chattanooga police released the names of two people who were shot in their car.
Sean Ware, 27, and Carolyn Harris, 44, were fired on after a dark-colored sedan pulled up on their right side at the intersection of Wilcox and North Holtzclaw, police said.
Both were taken to the hospital with wounds not considered to be life-threatening.
Police ask anyone with information on the attack to call 423-698-2525.
The "person shot" call came in at 5:15 p.m., less than an hour after Chief of Police Fred Fletcher and other officers joined community members in a prayer walk for Thomas Simmons, a 20-year-old who was shot to death just two blocks away Monday.
Fletcher said early reports indicate the two injured people, a man and a woman, were stopped at the intersection when a dark-colored sedan pulled up on their right.
Someone in the dark car opened fire with a rifle, shooting several rounds through the windows of the victims' car before speeding off in the direction of Amnicola Highway.
Fletcher said every single police officer available was out on the streets looking for the suspect's car.
"This community is tired. I'm tired, and these officers are tired of this," he said. "That's why you see 30 officers out here."
Authorities said there is no reason to believe the shooting is connected to a spat of retaliatory gang violence that swept the city last week after Simmons' death.
But Jerome Caudle, a security guard who was on his way to work when he saw the crime scene, stood on the sidewalk staring at the pack of police cars and said gun violence is all too common in this, his neighborhood.
"It's bad, young folks are off the chain," he said. "They get all of this stuff off of TV."
Contact staff writer Emmett Gienapp at egienapp@ timesfreepress.com.