Two teenagers were shot to death Thursday afternoon on Detroit's west side in what police described as an ambush by youths who had argued with the pair earlier in the day.
A teenage girl was found shot to death inside a bullet-riddled Mercury Marquis, and a 19-year-old man lay dead on the pavement about 20 yards away after the 2:30 p.m. shooting on the Southfield Freeway service drive just north of Joy Road, police said.
Two teenage girls who had been in the backseat were unhurt, though one was grazed by glass when bullets shattered the car's windows, police said.
Investigators were seeking multiple suspects, at least one of whom had fired "a high-powered type of weapon -- a rifle" at the car, then fled in a dark SUV, said Detroit Police Inspector Dwane Blackmon, head of the homicide unit.
"Earlier, the victims were at a house, and there was some type of altercation there" with the shooter or shooters, who then followed the victims' car in the SUV, Blackmon said.
"It appears to have been a minor dispute that turned violent. We're lacking the ability to resolve conflicts without shooting."
But a woman at the scene who said she was the mother of the dead girl told a different story.
Marsha Kalka of Warren sat in her car in sight of the crashed Mercury where her daughter's body had been found. In the street, a blue tarp covered the body of a young man who Kalka said had been driving the car -- which came to rest after crashing through the service drive's fence.
"The boy that killed her was her ex-boyfriend," Kalka said. "They were in a relationship for almost two years. He was beating on her, and she broke up with him about two months ago. He came and shot her today."
Her daughter -- Tashana Kalka, 17 -- lived in Warren in the family home; her ex-boyfriend is a Detroiter, Kalka said.
She found out about her daughter's death, she said, when "the two girls in the backseat -- my daughter's friends -- they called me on my daughter's cell phone."
The car was being driven by her daughter's new boyfriend, Kalka said, and he tried to escape by jumping out of the Mercury as the shooting began but was gunned down yards away.
Kalka sat sobbing in her car, parked a few yards from the yellow police tape surrounding the scene of police cars, ringed by scores of bystanders, as Thursday afternoon's rush-hour traffic crept past on the freeway.
She said she had heard the shooters were "a bunch of guys in a gray Trailblazer."
The Free Press is not identifying any suspects until police release their names.
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