Bloomington police continue the investigation into a Dec. 9 shooting in the Crestmont neighborhood where a 48-year-old man died after being shot in the head.
Brian L. Thacker, who had no permanent address, died at IU Health Bloomington Hospital less than an hour after the 10:30 p.m. incident outside an apartment in the 1000 block of North Summit Street on the city’s northwest side.
The man who fired the gun was taken into custody and questioned, police said, but hasn’t been arrested. Details about the shooting, including whether it was intentional or may have been in self-defense, haven’t been released. Investigators are waiting for autopsy and toxicology test results.
The gun, shell casings and other evidence were collected at the scene. Witnesses were taken to the police station to be questioned about what they heard and saw that night.
Shots-fired calls not uncommon in Bloomington
During 2024, Bloomington Police Department officers responded to 40 incidents where 911 callers reported what they thought were gunshots.
Sometimes officers arrived and found nothing. Sometimes they found spent shell casings or a bullet hole in a window from a drive-by shooting.
Sometimes a person had been shot.
Officers responding to the first shots-fired call of 2024, on Jan. 9, found a 52-year-old transient man dead at a homeless camp in the woods behind Wheeler Mission. An unhoused woman was arrested and charged with murder. Police allege she fired a gun into a tent, the bullet striking the victim in the head.
The last BPD shots-fired call in 2024 was at 4:48 a.m. Dec. 5, when officers discovered a 22-year-old man dead inside his vehicle from a self-inflicted gunshot.
Examples of non-lethal shots-fired calls in 2024 include a Feb. 4 incident where a juvenile shot two men with a pepper ball gun at Switchyard Park and a Sept. 18 report where bullets were fired from a slow-moving sedan on East Third Street near Morningside Drive.
Contact H-T reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Investigation into shooting of Brian Thacker in Bloomington continues