LAWRENCE — A Pennsylvania detective posing as a teenage girl on MySpace.com started a conversation with a high-school shooting suspect hiding out hundreds of miles away at a relative's home in Lawrence.
With help from security at the social networking site, police pinpointed the Lawrence home where the boy was accessing his MySpace account on Monday afternoon. Police later arrived at 2 Falmouth St., and arrested the 15-year-old boy "sitting at a computer."
The boy is wanted in his hometown of Erie, Pa. He is accused of firing shots into the bleachers during a high-school basketball game and wounding a young woman Jan. 20.
The boy left Erie on Friday after purchasing a Greyhound bus ticket bound for Lowell, Mass., police said. He arrived at his aunt's apartment, telling relatives he had a couple of days off from school and decided to come visit them.
"I didn't know what he had done," his uncle, Maximiliano Velasquez, said yesterday.
Erie police plan to charge the teen with simple assault and hope to try him as an adult. In Lawrence, he was held overnight at the police station and arraigned in Juvenile Court yesterday on a fugitive from justice charge. Police said the boy will likely return to Erie this week for formal arraignment there.
According to police, boys varsity teams from East and Harborcreek high schools were playing when a fight erupted and the teen fired two shots into the bleachers. A 21-year-old woman was shot in the hip and leg area. A "noticeable pool of blood" was found and "she was crying and yelling in pain," according to an Erie police report.
The woman was taken to a local hospital, where she was treated and released last weekend. The motive for the shooting is unclear but police don't think the woman was targeted by the shooter and was merely an innocent bystander.
Police obtained copies of game video being filmed that night by both scouts, coaches and school security. Several witnesses also told police they saw a black male wearing a white hooded jacket stand up and fire "gunshots in the direction of the victim," according to a police report.
In Lawrence, police also searched an attic where the boy was sleeping during his visit. During booking at the police station, two small bags of marijuana were found in the teen's possession, police said.
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