Man shot and killed by coworker outside northwest Indiana manufacturing plant
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A Merrillville man is charged with murder, accused of fatally shooting a co-worker minutes after getting off work early Wednesday at a manufacturing plant in Portage, Indiana.
Police said Lenell Jenkins, 22, was in the parking lot of the Camaco manufacturing building on Ameriplex Drive, when a colleague shot him after an argument. That co-worker, 20-year-old Lupe McGee Jr., has been charged with murder.
Witnesses at the scene told police there was nothing about the conversation between two colleagues that even signaled to them to pay attention – until they heard gunshots.
Jenkins leaves behind his mother and a pregnant fiancée.
"I had all plans on planning a baby shower, not my son's goddamn funeral. No," said Jenkins mother.
She was at work when she learned her son was shot.
"That is not the plan that I had," she said. "My plan was to do a baby shower, not bury my son before his child got here. That is not what I had planned."
Jenkins was just finishing up his shift around 3:30 a.m., when he texted his fiancée.
"He never stopped talking ever," she said.
Minutes before the shooting, Jenkins' fiancée said she heard from him for the last time.
"Five minutes before I got the call that he passed away, he texted me, 'Everything's normal. I'm getting ready to go to the car now. I'm getting ready to be on my way home,'" she said.
Before he could drive off, police said Jenkins got into an argument with McGee, who shot Jenkins multiple times with a handgun. Jenkins was unarmed.
"You ain't God. You're not God. You was just a punk that put a gun in your hand. You was a coward," Jenkins' mother said.
As Jenkins' mother calls for justice in his death, his fiancée is left to figure out how to raise their child without him.
"I have to navigate trying to handle that," his fiancée said.
McGee was arrested at his home six hours after the shooting. He's being held without bond.