In 2019, Lexington, where I lived from 1971 through 1984, and, since my return to the Bluegrass State in 2017 is the closest ‘major’ city to me, set a new city homicide record of 30. In 2020, it broke that record, with 34 murders.

Well, that didn’t last long, as the city has now seen 35 homicides, with the murder of Ramon Pennie on December 7^th. 35 killings in 341 days works out to one every ten days, and projecting the current homicide rate further, the city could see 37.4633 murders by the end of the year. Unlike Philadelphia, city leaders have at least touched on the reasons for the increased homicide numbers:

‘It’s a community problem.’ Lexington police chief addresses record homicide numbers.

by Christopher Leach | Wednesday, December 8, 2021 | 5:03 PM EST | Updated: 5:10 PM EST

The city of Lexington broke its annual homicide record after a 51-year-old man was shot and killed on Tuesday evening.

Ramon Pennie was shot and killed on Hill Street Tuesday night, marking the 35th homicide in Lexington in 2021. That surpassed the record number of 34 in 2020. With a few weeks until the calendar flips to 2022, it’s possible the new-record homicide count could rise.

Lexington Chief of Police Lawrence Weathers hosted a press conference Tuesday afternoon to address the high number of homicides. He said a number of factors play into the disturbing trend, but the root of the problem starts within the community.

“What I know for a fact is that this is not just a police problem, it’s not a city, government problem, it’s a community problem,” Weathers said. “Where we can do things immediately on the front end, I think all of us working together in the community, with the community’s help, can do things not just to alleviate and reduce criminal activity, especially homicides in the short long, but in the long run.”

Read more at: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/crime/article256427956.html#storylink=cpy

The Lexington Police Department’s Homicide Investigations page is somewhat in arrears in its data: only 33 homicides are listed, the last on November 20^th. In only 12 of the 33 listed killings is there an indication that a suspect has been apprehended.

One thing that the homicide page does not include in its public data is the race and sex of the deceased, but the non-fatal Shootings Investigations page does. Out of 127 non-fatal shootings, 20 of the victims are listed as white, and 12 are listed as Hispanic, which means that 95 of the victims are listed as being black. That’s 74.80%, in a city in which only 14.61% of the population are listed as black.

Out of those 127 non-fatal shootings, the police list 11 as solved. That’s a whopping 8.66% of cases. 🙁

Chief Weathers was right: it is a community problem. He just couldn’t bring himself to say which community.

On October 16^th, we noted Lexington’s 30^th homicide, which tied the then-record set in 2019. Then, on October 27^th, we reported on number 31, followed by number 32 on the 29^th.

So, now it’s November 5^th, and the city is up to homicide number 33:

LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Lexington Police responded to a shots fired call after 2:30 a.m. Friday morning at a house on West Main Street.

Police are investigating this incident as a homicide, which they say occurred upstairs in an apartment.

The owner of Trifecta, the location where the shooting happened, told LEX 18 that the victim who died upstairs is not a tenant there. “We appreciate everyone’s concern and know everything will be okay. We’re cooperating with authorities to do whatever we can to solve the case,” the owner said.

On the 700th block of west Main Street in Lexington where a death investigation is underway. Coroner is in scene. @LEX18News pic.twitter.com/045mfBs7qs

— Christiana Ford (@christianaford_) November 5, 2021

That’s four homicides in twenty days, well above the current annual rate of one every 9½ days. The city is on pace for 39 homicides now, which would shatter the current record of 34, set just last year.

But, if you get pissed off at someone in Lexington, you might as well shoot him! Out of 113 active shooting investigations — and, as of this writing, the Lexington Police Department last updated the shootings investigations page on October 28 — only 12 are listed as solved. Of the homicides, only 12 out of the 31 listed — that page is behind on updates, too — have been solved.

It was only three days ago that we reported:

It was just ten days ago that we reported that Lexington had tied it’s then-record of 30 homicides recorded in 2019, a record rewritten with 34 killings in 2020. Alas! that number 30 didn’t last for long. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported a 9:50 PM Monday assault in the Victorian Square Parking Garage at 350 West Short Street, in which one man died at the scene from his injuries. A suspect was taken to the hospital with unspecified injuries.

And now, homicide number 32 has occurred:

Teen shot, found dead inside flipped vehicle near Lexington Cemetery. Name released.

By Christopher Leach | October 29, 2021 | 7:31 AM EDT | Updated: 7:44 AM EDT

A teenager in Lexington is dead after being found with a gunshot wound inside a flipped vehicle on Price Road Thursday night, according to Lexington police.

Sergio Villarados, 17, died from a gunshot wound at 9:24 p.m. Thursday, per the Fayette County coroner. His death was a homicide, marking the 32nd killing in Lexington this year.

The call first came in at 8:51 p.m. about a single-vehicle car crash on Price Road, which is adjacent to the Suburban Mobile Home Park and the Lexington Cemetery, according to Lt. Chris Van Brackel. Upon arrival, officers found Villarados and another person inside the flipped vehicle.

Sergio Villarados. Photo by Alvis Villarau.

Immediately prior to the crash, police had responded to a shots fired call on Breathitt Avenue, which is only 6 minutes away from Price Road, though the Lexington Police Department is not certain that the incidents are related.

Thirty-two homicides in 301 days works out to a pace which would have 38.80 homicides for the year. At the current pace of a murder every ten days, the city could pass the record of 34 by the end of November.

WLEX-TV, Channel 18, reports that the other passenger was a 19-year-old woman. No other details were reported.

His mother, Alvis Villarau, tells us through a relative translating from Spanish that her son was a hard-working young man and a senior at Dunbar High School who loved playing soccer.

“He was a really good young man,” she said. “He didn’t do anything wrong to no one. He always liked playing soccer.”

Kind of makes you wonder: if he did nothing wrong to anyone, why was he shot?

I think I’m getting cynical.

It was just ten days ago that we reported that Lexington had tied it’s then-record of 30 homicides recorded in 2019, a record rewritten with 34 killings in 2020. Alas! that number 30 didn’t last for long. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported a 9:50 PM Monday assault in the Victorian Square Parking Garage at 350 West Short Street, in which one man died at the scene from his injuries. A suspect was taken to the hospital with unspecified injuries.

Benjamin William Call, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Victim’s name released. Man faces murder charge after fatal Lexington garage assault

By Christopher Leach | October 26, 2021 | 7:37 AM EDT | Updated 11:43 AM EDT

A man was killed after being assaulted in a downtown Lexington parking garage Monday night, according to Lexington police.

John Tyler Abner, 31, was pronounced dead on scene due to blunt-trauma injuries sustained from the assault, according to the Fayette County coroner.

Police have charged Benjamin Call, 39, with murder. Call is currently being held at the Fayette County Detention Center.

There’s more at the original; the Lexington Police believe that the victim and his (alleged) assailant knew each other prior to the assault.

The mugshot published here was, of course, not published by the Herald-Leader, but, as is our policy, The First Street Journal does publish such photos. The mugshot was from the Fayette County Detention Center, and is freely available as a matter of public record. It was available to the newspaper had the editors chosen to use it.

This is not Mr Call’s first brush with the law, given that the Detention Center had a previous mugshot of him, dated August 25, 2015.

This is the city’s first homicide of the year that was not committed with a firearm.
____________________________

Update: 7:20 PM EDT

It isn’t just The First Street Journal which publishes these mugshots. WLEX-TV, Channel 18, the Lexington NBC affiliate station, not only has the story, complete with mugshot available on their website, but ran the story, complete with mugshot, on the air at approximately 7:04 PM EDT.

The Herald-Leader’s idiotic mugshot policy — which is dictated to them by McClatchy Company, which owns the paper — doesn’t keep the mugshots of offenders charged with crimes off the internet, but simply withholds information from their subscribers, from people who are paying for their service.

We noted, on October 5^th, Lexington’s 29^th homicide of 2021, and how Lexington was just one behind the then record of 30, set in 2019, but, of course, the record was broken again, with 34 in 2020. Well, that didn’t last long!

Man dies after double shooting near Tates Creek High School in Lexington

by Christopher Leach | October 14, 2021 | 12:10 PM EDT | Updated: 4:26 PM EDT

One of two people shot outside a Lexington apartment building died, Lexington police said Thursday.

Andre Holloway, 46, died at University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital where he was taken after the shooting, according to the Fayette County coroner’s office.

There’s more at the original. A previous article, published at 8:17 AM the same day, noted the double shooting, but Mr Holloway hadn’t been reported as having died at the time. Neither the Lexington Shootings Investigations page nor the Homicide Investigations page have, as of this writing, been updated to include this crime.

Thirty murders in 286 days works out to 0.104895 per day, or 38.29 for the year. If that rate holds, it will not only smash the record set just last year, but give the city a homicide rate of 11.71 per 100,000 population.

Lexington isn’t Philadelphia, but that doesn’t mean that the guns aren’t firing there! I was checking The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website Sunday evening, to see if there were any stories on homicides, and then said to myself, “Self, you should check the Lexington Herald-Leader as well!”

1 woman, 1 teenager shot outside a Lexington home, police say. Suspect flees scene

By Jeremy Chisenhall | Sunday, October 10, 2021 | 4:40 PM EDT | Updated: 7:38 PM EDT



Endon Drive, Lexington, from Google Maps. The red mark on the map does not indicate the shooting site. Click to enlarge.

A Lexington shooting suspect fled Sunday after wounding a woman and a teenager outside a home, according to Lexington police.

The shooting happened around 1:45 p.m. on Endon Drive, according to police. The woman was believed to have “critical” injuries, according to police Lt. Chris Van Brackel. Both victims were taken to University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital for treatment, Van Brackel said.

The suspect fled in a vehicle, Van Brackel said. But he wasn’t the only one who took off from the area after the shooting.

There’s more at the original, but there wasn’t a whole lot more information. Then again, it seemed as though the Lexington Police didn’t want to share much with the article author. The victims were a 56-year-old black woman and 15-year-old black male.^[1]The last sentence was added at 10:30 AM on Wednesday, October 13, 2021, with information taken from Lexington Shootings Investigations page.

Lexington isn’t like Philly, jammed up with row houses. Endon Drive is a starter home neighborhood, some brick, a couple of them stone, some clapboard and even a couple showing what appears to be asbestos shingle siding. The Google Maps streetview image, taken in October 2015, shows an Alison Lundergan Grimes campaign sign in support of her 2015 re-election campaign for Kentucky’s Secretary of State, a campaign she won. Mrs Grimes had been the 2014 Democratic Senate nominee, a campaign she lost to Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) by a landslide margin.