Two men were shot after an argument Friday night near campus, police said.
Police hadn’t released the names of the two shooting victims by Sunday night, but said they were treated at Sacred Heart Medical Center and are expected to recover.
The men were outside the Hilyard Street Market at East 17th Avenue and Hilyard Street shortly before midnight Friday when an argument broke out among a group of people gathered there.
According to police at the scene, the perpetrator shot one person in the stomach and another person in the leg with either a small-caliber pistol or a high-powered pellet gun.
Police are looking for a 5-foot-8-inch man in his early 20s with dark skin, dark hair and possibly a goatee.
“There are several leads in the area, and we’re following up,” Eugene Police Department Acting Sgt. Bill Solesbee said Friday night, as a crowd gathered around the crime scene.
By midnight Friday, police had blocked off Hilyard Street and were interviewing witnesses and searching the ground for evidence.
One witness, an area high school student named Joe who declined to give his last name, said the shooting stemmed from a confrontation between two groups of student-aged men.
“An argument ensued, some pushing and shoving went on and one guy pulled a gun,” he said.
He said he saw a the perpetrator shoot one man in the stomach and cross the street, walking northbound along Hilyard Street. A friend of the first victim chased the shooter, who turned and shot the pursuer in the leg, Joe said.
Hilyard Street Market employees heard the shots and called police.
“We heard the sounds inside the store, and we thought at first that somebody threw something against the wall,” said Poramek Dengsot, who works at the market.
Tony Starr, who lives near the market and was watching police process the crime scene, said the shooting was “unsettling.”
“I’m not really that stressed about it, but it does make an unsafe feeling in the area,” said Starr, a junior philosophy major at the University.