NIAGARA FALLS — A Niagara Falls man claims that on two occasions he was just minding his own business outside a city bar when he was shot in the head.

Willie McTyere, 29, of Whirlpool Street was taken to Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center with a gunshot wound to his head after the shooting shortly before 11 p. m. Wednesday in the parking lot of the Elks Sunset Lodge in the 3200 block of Highland Avenue.

He was transferred to Erie County Medical Center and then discharged.

“He had been shot just above his left eye, but it didn’t go through his skull; it was just a flesh wound,” said Capt. William M. Thomson, chief of detectives.

Thomson said the victim was very uncooperative at the city hospital and told police that he had “just been minding his own business.”

“He said he was sitting in his car in the parking lot when he heard gunshots and then a bullet hit his windshield and then struck him in the forehead,” Thomson said. “He said he doesn’t know who was shooting.”

At 2:50 a. m. Jan. 23, police responded to a report of shots fired outside Jo Jo’s Smokehouse, a bar in the 1400 block of Main Street.

Thomson said that at the hospital McTyere was found with a “hole in the top of his head” from a possible gunshot wound that had entered the top of his skull and caused some bleeding. He said McTyere had to be restrained because he was uncooperative.

Thomson said Wednesday’s shooting does not appear to be related to other recent shootings that have been part of gang turf wars.