South Bend shooting victims double from last year, but remain below six-year average

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) - South Bend had 10 people killed or injured in criminally assaulted shooting incidents during the first three months of the year, a 100 percent increase from the same period last year.

City leaders say the number is still below the six-year average, and they’re pointing to prevention programs and new technology as part of the response.

South Bend Mayor James Mueller and Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski delivered the numbers as part of the first-quarter public safety update on Thursday morning.

“It just shows that we continue to have more work to do. We know that. And our goal is to make this a peaceful and violent-free community,” Mueller said.

Ruszkowski said the department must make sure crimes are not being repeated.

“You do the time for the crime, and that’s end of it. But there are follow-ups that are now occurring. We have to make sure that those crimes are not happening again, from a criminal perspective,” Ruszkowski said.

Teen involvement

City leaders also spoke about a growing concern of teenagers being involved in shooting incidents.

“It’s been fairly even, not to say it’s not a problem, or it’s not something that we need to get top of, absolutely we do. But we just wanna clarify that this is not something that’s worsening. It’s something we need to get better, not worsening,” Mueller said.

The mayor said the city plans to expand programs with South Bend Community School Corporation and the police department to steer kids toward positive options.

“I think we all know that telling them verbatim don’t do something is not going to be a successful strategy. And so, the key is getting them focused on positive paths, positive things to do, so that they don’t end up finding these negative influences and negative paths,” Ruszkowski said.

New technology

Drones

The police department shared updates on new technology, including its drone as a first responder program, also known as DFR.

Police said the drones respond to high-priority calls, including crashes, fires, missing persons, water rescues, shooting and robberies.

According to police, the DFR program cuts response times by about two minutes. The pilots, the majority of which are civilian crime analysts who are FAA Part 107-certified, relay initial scene observations to approaching officers.

The flight dashboard is publicly available at southbendin.gov/dfr.

License plate readers

Police have been utilizing license plate readers, which capture plate images during investigations. By using the readers, police said they have been able to clear 37 cases, including 10 vehicle thefts in 2026 so far.

Crash numbers

Police also shared the top five intersections with the most crashes from Jan. 1 to March 31, with Chapin Street and West Sample Street appearing to be the most dangerous intersection so far this year.

Officials also shared last year’s five most dangerous intersections through the first quarter and compared those numbers to the first quarter of 2026.

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