SOUTHPORT, Ind. (WTHR) - A good Samaritan says other innocent bystanders may have just missed being in a gunman's line of fire in Southport Thursday.
The man who police say crashed his car on South Madison then shot and killed Lt. Aaron Allan seemed unconscious as other drivers stopped to help him. Those good Samaritans were on the scene minutes before the police.
Witness Bill McNeely says one of them was a nurse.
"We were lucky," he said. "I was just thinking if I got there a little earlier, the accident would have been right there and I would have been driving right into it. And if we'd have stayed another few seconds later, we would have been right there at the shooting. It hasn't left my head since."
McNeely says before police arrived at the crash scene, a nurse was checking the interior of the crashed, flipped over car, checking on the two men inside.
"When she first got in there, she said they were both unconscious. Then she yelled out that one of them was coming around and going in and out of consciousness. So she went into the car a little further," said McNeely. "And she said the other one was starting to wake up. And again that's when everything happened, pretty much after that."
At that point, McNeely got in his car and left. Minutes later, police say the driver of that crashed car pulled a gun and shot and killed Allan, who arrived at the scene, also trying to help any victims in that crashed car.
"It's amazing with an accident like that you can wake up and do something that senseless. I don’t know...it's unbelievable," McNeely said.
McNeely did not see the shooting, but after leaving the crash scene he stopped at a gas station. That's when he saw scores of police cars race by, then an ambulance with a string of police cars passed, carrying the fallen officer to Eskenazi Hospital.
