19-year-old girl killed in SB shooting wanted to become ultrasound technician

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) - As yellow police tape stretched across the 1000 block of Yukon Avenue Thursday morning, police continued to pick up the pieces of what’s left following the murder of 19-year-old South Bend teen, Ashanti Hines.

Police say Hines was inside the driver seat of a parked Nissan Sentra around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday when several shots were fired.

Neighbor Mike Pluta says he heard the gunshots just a few houses down.

“I didn’t know if they were fireworks or gunshots but had to be a lot of them,” Pluta said.

One of the bullets struck Hines in the head killing her and all of her dreams.

“No matter how failures come my way, remember…failure creates a humble person,” that is what Hines said in a video as a student for The Crossing last year.

Chief operating officer for The Crossing, Ryan Hill, says Hines was a 2020 graduate and had big dreams of working in a hospital.

“She wanted to be an ultrasound technician. She just lit up the room and everybody loved her. We’re just having a hard day after learning about this,” Hill told 16 News Now.

Ashanti’s family reached out to 16 News Now. They say she completed her Medical Billing and Coding. They also say “Ashanti was a very sweet sweet spirit. Fun and loving. Her dreams were large and attainable. And she was well on her way to achieving those dreams.”

At the scene, more than 10 other bullets hit a man’s parked Dodge Charger and sprayed the side of a nearby family home. A woman who lives inside who did not want to be shown on camera, says the bullets nearly missed her daughter’s bedroom.

What’s left now are loved ones looking for closure and investigators searching for the person, or people, behind yet another senseless shooting.

“Make sure you have control over your children because a lot of these kids out here shooting are teenagers. As patrons of the city of South Bend, we all need to step up and if we see something, we need to report it because that’s the only way the stuff is going to stop. These kids got it to stop dying,” South Bend Police Captain Joseph Leszczynski says.

Just two weeks into the month of October, there have been at-least seven shootings in South Bend including the one that killed Hines.

Investigators say they did find two others on scene, besides Hines, shortly after shots rang out. They were both taken in for questioning.

However, police say they still don’t have a suspect at this time. Anyone with information is asked to contact County Metro Homicide at 574-235-5009 or Michiana Crime Stoppers at 574-288-STOP.