Murder and attempted murder charges have been filed against a Gary man in a 2015 shooting that left one man dead and one man seriously wounded.
Christopher Godines, 29, was charged in the killing of Jonathon Farries and the wounding of Courteau Givens on June 24, 2015, outside a Gary tavern.
When police arrived to the parking lot of Murphy’s House of Pain, 5245 E. Dunes Highway in the Miller section, they found Farries, 20, dead of a gunshot wound to the head behind the wheel of a green Chevrolet Trailblazer. Givens, then 27, was found near the train tracks in a wooded area about 40 feet north of the bar. Police found 13 spent casings, one live bullet and two spent bullets at the scene.
Surveillance footage showed a man getting into a Cadillac Escalade and driving off as the shooter got into his SUV, the probable cause affidavit said. The video also shows Farries arriving with Givens in the Trailblazer and an altercation between a man and Givens, records state.
The man who got into the Escalade, later identified through a sworn statement as Godines, fired first into the Trailblazer, which Farries was driving, documents said. Givens was already inside the Trailblazer when the gunfire began. As the SUV was driving away, a gunshots appear to come from inside, documents said. The SUV crashed into several unoccupied cars parked in the lot.
Meanwhile, a bouncer at the bar fired seven shots toward the Trailblazer as it tried to drive east from the bar, which is on U.S. 12 west of Lake Street, documents said. A Lake County police firearms and toolmark examiner could neither identify nor exclude the casings spent bullets and fragments as coming from the bouncer’s gun, records state.
In December, the driver of the Escalade and his attorney met with prosecutors and police investigators. In that interview, the man told police he saw Godines shoot, documents said.
Givens, who was shot in the head, was transported to Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus in Gary and then to Loyola Medical Center in Illinois. When police attempted to interview him in December, he was uncooperative, court records state.
Godines has burglary, robbery and dealing in cocaine cases pending in Lake County, records state. He is currently in the Indiana Department of Correction serving a seven-year sentence after a jury convicted him of burglary in September.
Ruth Ann Krause is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
