Gunfire that started at a house on outer Union Street in Bangor left two people injured Tuesday — one at the scene of the shooting and another 3½ miles away.
Police were responding to 911 calls about gunfire near Sprague’s Nursery & Garden Center at about 11:30 a.m. and had found a shooting victim four houses away at 1702 Union St. when they received a report of another wounded person who had driven to 40 Everett St., Bangor police Sgt. Wade Betters said.
Betters did not identify either victim, but family members at the Everett Street apartment identified one as Albe LaGasse. LaGasse’s son, who is also named Albe, said his father had been shot in the face.
“He showed up here to tell me that he loved me,” the younger LaGasse said Tuesday. “I don’t know how he managed to drive himself here. It looked really bad.”
Police impounded a white Ford Fusion with blood stains along its driver’s side at the apartment and placed evidence markers inside a GMC Sierra pickup truck at the Union Street house.
One witness, Sprague’s clerk Chris Langlois, was in the backyard of the garden center when he heard what sounded like two or three shots and saw a wounded man “fumbling to get out of” the pickup while the white car sped off.
He and his son, 24-year-old Sprague’s clerk Kyle Langlois, ran to the house. By the time they arrived, the man who had been in the pickup truck was inside the house. Kyle applied pressure to the man’s wounded leg, getting blood on his hands, while his father talked with a third person who might have seen the shooting, Chris Langlois said.
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“I don’t know if the guy was at the house or had just happened by,” Langlois said.
The man took off down Union Street before police arrived, Langlois said.
Police sent an evidence-detecting dog and handler to the house and through part of the surrounding neighborhood in search of signs that people had fled the house immediately after the shooting, Betters said.
Betters, who spoke to reporters about an hour after the shooting, said police didn’t know what sparked the violence.
Neighbors said it was common to see cars visit the house at 1702 Union St. One neighbor said as many as 20 cars would visit in a single day. Out-of-state license plates were common, another neighbor said.
Ken Henderson, 64, whose house is behind the Union Street dwelling on Downing Road, said he has known the owner of the Union Street house — listed in city records as Brenda Shaboski — since he moved to the area 15 years ago.
Henderson described her as a good neighbor who suffered from health problems and said she liked to take people in to her home.
“The faces change out regularly,” Henderson said. “She is a really decent neighbor. She has a soft spot for people who seem to have nowhere else to go.”
Henderson, who raises free-range chickens, likes to bring his neighbor fresh eggs but has not seen her in months. Instead, he sees her guests or tenants, who tend to greet him sullenly.
“One thing I gotta say is that it’s always quiet there,” Henderson said. “We don’t have loud engines or fireworks or anything like that, and she always keeps the place immaculately.”
Gunshots are actually heard rather commonly in the area, Henderson said — noise from an outdoor shooting range at Bangor’s Air National Guard base, which is nearby.
BDN photojournalist Gabor Degre and reporter Callie Ferguson contributed to this report.