SPOKANE, Wash. — In the span of only six days, there were four different shootings in Spokane County.
Last Friday, there was an active shooter in Spokane Valley that ended with the shooter killed by police and no other injuries.
On Monday, a shooting near the Hillyard skate park sent one man to the hospital. On Friday morning, Spokane police announced they had arrested a suspect in that crime.
On Tuesday, a road rage incident turned into a drive-by shooting that caused no injuries in North Central Spokane. There has not been an arrest in that case.
On Wednesday, an incident witnesses said involved multiple shooters in North Central Spokane sent one man to the hospital. No arrests have been made in that case.
The string of violence has left many wondering whether any of the shootings are related. The Spokane Police Department believes they are not.
"There will be times when they do seem to bunch up," said SPD Sergeant Terry Preuninger. "Sometimes it's related. Sometimes, it would appear these are completely unrelated. You just happen to have similar events stacked up on top of each other one after another."
According to Preuninger, the series appears to just be random.
But, there are some factors that can sometimes promote increased violence. For instance, the time of the year.
"Anecdotally sometimes we see a little bit of an uptick of violent crime in the summer," said Preuninger. "You have more people out and about, that's more people coming into contact with each other, so that's more opportunity for things to go wrong."
Because of the ongoing status of the investigations, police say they can't currently give a firm answer on whether any of the at-large shooters pose a remaining threat to the public.
"That's a tough question, because when we don't have everybody in custody that we're looking for, then there still could be threats to the public. If someone knows that the police are looking for them, and they don't want to go back to jail, that in and of itself makes them even more dangerous than before," said Preuninger.
"Sometimes we're not 100 percent sure of who we are always looking for. We put these cases together, sometimes they're solved quickly, sometimes it takes days to gather all the facts and to know what we have. So we can't accurately always say there is a threat to the public or there's not."
Having shootings back to back can actually make each one more challenging to solve, as well.
"When we have a homicide or a shooting, it doesn't take just one detective. It takes multiple resources there. Those detectives all have large caseloads. They're working on other crimes. And then those get shoved to the back burner and now they're not getting the attention they need," said Preuninger.