The 19-year-old suspected of firing shots at police during a pursuit last month could face more than eight years in prison if convicted on all charges.
Jordan R. Fulkerson, 19, 197 Mystic Spring Drive, Greenwood, has been charged with criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon, resisting law enforcement, pointing a firearm — all level 6 felonies — and carrying a handgun without a license, a misdemeanor, according to court documents.
Fulkerson was a passenger in a vehicle that police tried to stop at 12:45 a.m. on Dec. 14 in Whiteland due to a broken tail light and a non-working license plate light. Police would later find methamphetamine, marijuana, a smoking device that contained meth residue and ammunition in the vehicle.
Both Fulkerson and the teen who were driving had warrants out for their arrests when they led police on a car chase through town for about two minutes, reaching speeds of more than 60 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood southwest of U.S. 31 and County Road 600 North. Once the car turned into a neighborhood, on Deville Place, police watched as the passenger jumped out of the car and took off running, but they did not notice the driver had also escaped on foot, they said. Officers realized the car was unoccupied once it ran over a street sign and into a yard, according to the documents.
Officers, still in their patrol cars, saw a flash of light from a gun being fired, according to court documents. They did not hear the shot due to their police sirens blaring, they said.
The passenger “ran around the front of the vehicle and pulled out a semi-automatic pistol and pointed it straight at me. I attempted to find cover and while doing so saw the flash of the muzzle as the weapon went off,” one officer wrote in the probable cause affidavit.
The officer later identified Fulkerson in a lineup as the person who shot at him.
As the officer started to get out of his vehicle, Fulkerson turned around and held the pistol up but did not fire it, he said. He recognized Fulkerson from several encounters at Whiteland Community High School, where the officer works as a part-time school resource officer, court documents said.
Fulkerson took off running, jumped a fence and disappeared, police said.
Police set up a perimeter, but even with K9s, drones and a helicopter, were unable to find the two, court documents said.
Later that day, two New Whiteland police officers shot Fulkerson’s accomplice, a 17-year-old, when he pointed a gun at them outside his home in the Country Gate subdivision.
The teen was rushed to the hospital where he underwent surgery and survived. The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office was called in to investigate the shooting. The sheriff’s office has turned the results of that investigation over the Johnson County Prosecutor’s Office for review.
Fulkerson was arrested that afternoon when police found him running in a field behind the house where the boy was shot.
Police were called to the teen’s home by a relative, who said he had returned and had a gun. Police said they suspect Fulkerson was in the home at that time, but fled the house while they worked to get a search warrant for it. He was captured in the Mayes Trailer Service parking lot a few hundred feet from the residence.
Earlier that day, employees at Mayes confronted Fulkerson and the teen about walking through their lot. Surveillance video confirms this, according to court documents. In the video, neither are wearing shoes and they were wrapped in blankets. Fulkerson was carrying an umbrella.
