SPATE OF SHOOTINGS:

Police investigate after five people were shot in an eight-hour period.

Memphis police on Thursday were investigating five shootings overnight Wednesday and early Thursday that sent four men and a woman to the hospital.

Police received the first shooting call around 8:20 p.m. Wednesday, when investigators were called to Methodist Hospital North. When officers arrived, emergency room staff said the victim had been brought in by a private vehicle with a gunshot wound to his lower leg. The victim told police that he was in a friend’s car at Wells Station and Grey Road near the National Cemetery area when a man walked up to the car and opened fire. Officers checked that area but couldn’t find a crime scene, police said.

Nearly three hours later, around 11:08 p.m. Wednesday, police responded to a shooting in the 3100 block of East Danville off Knight Arnold near Sheffield High School. In that incident, the shooting victim told police that he went to the Eden Pointe Apartments to meet the suspect. He said as he drove to the rear of the apartment, the suspect and another man forced him out of his car, robbed him and then shot him. The victim was taken to Regional Medical Center in critical condition, and the suspects fled.

Around 12:20 a.m. Thursday, police respond--

ed to a shooting call on Lamar and South Parkway after a man told a police dispatcher that his girlfriend had been shot and he was en route to Regional Medical Center but had a flat tire.

When police arrived, they found an abandoned car with the left front tire shredded, a bullet hole in the windshield and blood in the passenger seat. Police found a woman with a gunshot wound had been brought to Regional Medical Center by a private car and was in critical condition.

The woman’s boyfriend told officers that he and the woman went to Pendleton Park Apartments, so he could fight a man he said was a member of the Bloods gang. The man told officers that as they all went in the alley, the suspect fired an assault rifle at them. He said he drove off but minutes later discovered that his girlfriend had been shot. No crime scene was found at Pendleton and Lamar, police said.

At 1:05 a.m. Thursday, officers found an apparent drive-by shooting scene in the 400 block of Foote Park Circle in Foote Homes near downtown Memphis. A man with a gunshot wound was found at the scene. He was taken to Regional Medical Center, where he was upgraded to stable condition. The victim told police that as he and a friend stood outside the apartments, a black car drove up and a man started shooting at them.

The fifth shooting was reported at 3:45 a.m. Thursday when police were called to Union and Cleveland in Midtown about an aggravated assault. Police found shell casings, bullet fragments and broken glass but no victim.

Police then were called to Regional Medical Center again, where a man told them that his car was shot at and his cousin was injured in the shooting at Cleveland and Union. He said suspects in a Chevrolet Malibu pulled next to his car and fired. The suspects fled in an unknown direction.

Police said no arrests had been made in any of the shootings. Anyone with information is asked to call CrimeStoppers at 901-5282274 (CASH).