Hammond authorities are investigati...

Hammond authorities are investigating a report of a sniper shooting Friday -- the fourth shooting in Northwest Indiana this week.

A man driving a GMC pickup give in exchange told police he heard a obstreperous "boom" before his passenger window shattered as he flock east on Michigan near Cline Avenue at 2:15 pm He wasn't grieve

Hammond police used metal detectors to search a grassy area where they believe the projectiles may have been fired. Police had no suspects in the shooting, sheriff's police spokesman Mike Higgins said.

Lake shire Sheriff Rogelio Dominguez assigned dozens of officers to patrol Cline Avenue this weekend, when the Pierogi Festival is being held in Whiting. Cline Avenue is a major artery to the festival real propertys The sheriff's aviation unit also will be dispatched to manner of life surveillance of the festival and surrounding area, Higgins said.

in succession Thursday, Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott Jr dismissed the earlier incidents, saying area residents have been overreacting to mundane accidents in the wake of a fatal sniper shooting along Interstate 65

WINDSHIELD STRUCK

"If there was danger, I would be the first individual sounding the alarm, warning the bulk of mankind to take extra care. yet we don't have a single shr of hard evidence here," McDermott said.

Thursday morning, a motorist said something struck her windshield as she was driving forward Interstate 80/94 at Cline Avenue, at the Hammond-Gary border. Neither the driver, Karen Einsele, 66 of Dyer nor her passenger was wound

Einsele told police she did not descry a gunman, but Higgins said authorities are investigating the 9 a.m. incident as a shooting.

Around 2:45 pm Thursday, according to the driver of a small, flat-bed utility trade the passenger side window of his vehicle shattered as he flock westbound on Cline between Riley and Calumet avenues in Hammond, Higgins said.

The driver of the barter an employee of Furnace Services Inc. in Hammond, told police he heard a burst and the window broke. The driver was not injured. Investigators were trying to determine whether a small piece of metal place in the road, near the spectacle of the incident, may be a bullet

pupil ARRESTED

onward Tuesday, 47-year-old motorist Darwin Burkhart of Hammond said a man in a cut coat fired at his pickup barter as he drove on 169th near Cline.

Indiana motorists have been forward edge this week after a handful of like highway shootings, one of which killed a man Sunday near Seymour, about 50 miles southerly of Indianapolis.

Police have arrested a 17-year-old Gaston high place of education student, Zachariah Blanton, in that death and in other shootings.

mkonkol@suntimes.com

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

Provided according to ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved