Drive-by shooting at medical marijuana dispensary

DETROIT - Shots ring out at a Detroit pot shop outside a store on Detroit's west side.

One person is in critical condition and the shooter is on the run.

Shell casings on the street, bullet holes in the front window and blood all over the doorstep. At 10 a.m. Tuesday somebody opened fire at a medical marijuana dispensary on Grand River on Detroit's west side.

"I heard gunshots and when I looked out, I just saw people running," said Deborah Brown. "I ducked for cover and when the gunshots stopped and heard people running that's when I came out."

Deborah Brown works two doors down from total relief in Detroit's normally quiet Rosedale Park neighborhood.

Police say the 28-year-old manager of the medical marijuana dispensary had gone out to his car, a silver Chevrolet Impala in the parking lot.

"As he was going back into the building, a vehicle drove by and fired several shots striking him several times," said Lt. Michael Donovan

Police say when the manager was taken away by ambulance, he was still conscious and talking. There was another employee inside who was shot, but it was a graze wound and he refused medical attention.

Police are now reviewing surveillance video from inside the store to see what happened there in the moments before the shooting, outside involving a silver sport utility vehicle.

"It's a really nice place," said Justin Moses. "They always make me show my card, show my ID. They are legitimate as far as I'm concerned. I have never had a problem there with anybody."

Moses owns a cannabis club just down the street - called Roots of Nature.

"It does concern me though," Moses said. "Guys coming shooting at shops in broad daylight. It's a bad look for dispensaries and cannabis clubs in Detroit."

But councilman James Tate says they shouldn't be operating at all. He believes the saturation of these medical marijuana facilities is a problem - there are 21 within 19 miles in District One.

His ordinance is now before city council and would limit who can own them and where they can be located - not within a thousand feet of churches, schools, libraries and parks. Not within 2,000 feet of each other.

"We've got to do what we can to get people to understand that this lawlessness needs to end and get people out of the mindset that anything goes," Tate said.

The store manager remains hospitalized in critical condition.