FORT WAYNE – Rachel Hicks hopes to work in the medical field someday, but the south-side resident has already received an unexpected crash course in treating bullet wounds.

Two men inside a dark-colored Ford Taurus were shot and critically wounded Friday at East Sherwood Terrace and South Park Drive, just down the street from Hicks’ home. The shots rang out just after 3:30 p.m., disrupting a yard sale Hicks and her family were having.

Seconds later, someone down the street was yelling for a towel. Hicks grabbed one and headed for the 4600 block of South Park, where she found a man bleeding from his arm and lying on the porch of a home.

“He kept saying he was diabetic,” said Hicks, who noted that she’s attending school at Ivy Tech to become a medical assistant. “He said his blood sugar was low and he was going to pass out.”

Soon, Fort Wayne police officers were next to Hicks. She and the officers continued to help the man by applying pressure to his wounds while they waited for medics to arrive, she said. In that time, she heard the story the man gave to police:

He was driving his grandson in the Taurus. When his grandson saw a group of people he knew, he asked him to stop the car to talk. Someone in that group began firing a gun at the car, shooting the man and his grandson multiple times, Hicks said.

Fort Wayne police offered a similar story:

Two men were driving the Taurus north on South Park with a white Oldsmobile, made in the mid- to late-1980s, behind them. Police have not identified the men in the Taurus but listed one as 61 years old and the other as 24.

Both cars turned west onto Sherwood, with the Oldsmobile pulling up next to the Taurus. Police believe people in both cars knew one another, and that the cars stopped so the people inside could have a conversation, according to officer Scott Tegtmeyer, police spokesman.

At least one person, maybe more, in the Oldsmobile then began firing at the Taurus, Tegtmeyer said.

The shooting caused the Taurus to sideswipe a parked car along the street and then hit a tree in the front yard of a home in the 900 block of East Sherwood. The driver of the Taurus got out of the car and fled.

Police believe as many as four people might’ve been in the Oldsmobile, Tegtmeyer said. No arrests have been made. Witnesses told police there were six to eight gunshots, while Hicks said she heard from 12 to 15.

“It was pop, pop, poppoppoppoppoppop,” she said, imitating the sound.

Hicks helped the driver of the Taurus. She said he had a bullet wound in his forearm and another in his biceps area. The bullet that tore his biceps appeared to have shattered the bone, exited from the underarm area and ended up lodged in his chest near the collarbone, Hicks said.

“The way that arm was moving, no way it was in one piece,” Hicks said.

The man kept asking the officers treating him about his grandson, Hicks said.

Moments after the shooting, police had cordoned off the entire intersection. Residents of the neighborhood began flocking to the scene from all sides. Many said they heard the gunfire from blocks away, but few were willing to give their names when discussing the shooting or the neighborhood.

One woman said kids often played with firecrackers in the neighborhood and that it was sometimes hard to tell whether those loud bangs were gunshots. Hicks, who moved to the area in April, said she has heard some firecrackers and the sounds of some scuffles, but nothing like she heard Friday.

Another woman who came to the scene wondered aloud what ever happened to young people using fistfights to solve problems.

“You’d fight each other, and then two hours later you’d be best friends again,” the woman said.

Hicks said that after the shots rang out, she saw a group of people race off in a white car. She believes that the car belonged to the shooters since it was the only other car in the vicinity.

It did, though, have one characteristic not released by the police.

“It had green racing stripes along the top,” said Hicks, who gave her statement to police at the scene.

jeffwiehe@jg.net