Killington: Lexington sets a new homicide record

Yeah, it’s true, I concentrate more on homicides in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia than Lexington, the closest large city to me, the city in which I lived from 1971 through 1984, and the city in which my daughters live, but the City of Brotherly Love didn’t set a new homicide record in 2022, while Lexington did.

Coroner releases name of man killed in Bradley Court shooting that left 2 others injured

by Karla Ward | Friday, December 30, 2022 | 9:47 PM EST | Updated: Saturday, December 31, 2022 | 12:23 PM EST

The Fayette County coroner has identified a man who died after being shot in Lexington late Friday.

Bradley Court, from Google Streetscapes September 2022. This is not the murder scene. Click to enlarge.

Tyron Shaw, 21, of Lexington, was pronounced dead at 7:54 p.m. as a result of the shooting on the 400 block of Bradley Court, the coroner said in a news release Saturday.

Lexington police who were dispatched to a call about an assault on Bradley Court, off Georgetown Street near Price Road, Friday night said they found one person dead and two injured.

Police said the three male victims were on the sidewalk suffering from gunshot wounds when they arrived at about 7:20 p.m.

Shaw was pronounced dead at the scene, while the other two people who were shot were taken to a local hospital. One had life-threatening injuries. The other victim’s injuries were not thought to be life-threatening, police said in a news release.

There’s more at the original, but Mr Shaw was the 44th person murdered in Lexington in 2022. The previous record, 37 homicides, was set in 2021. That’s an 18.92% increase.

Population guesstimates for Lexington-Fayette County — and the entire county is under the unified Lexington-Fayette Urban-County Government — range pretty widely, from the Census Bureau’s 321,793 in 2021, to as high as 346,663 in 2022 by the World Population Review. Using the extremes of those numbers, 44 murders works out to a homicide rate of between 12.69 per 100,000 population and 13.67. That’s nowhere near as bad as St Louis, with 198 homicides in 2022, according to the St Louis Metropolitan Police Department. With a guesstimated population of 293,310, that works out to a homicide rate of 67.51, while Philly’s 516 murders and population guesstimate of 1,576,251 works out to 32.74 per 100,000.

But with ‘just’ 34 homicides in 2020, and a population of 322,570, the homicide rate was a significantly lower 10.54. Something ain’t right in Lexington!

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