3 shootings reported across Durham within eight hours of each other

Three shootings were reported across Durham over eight hours Sunday and early Monday, according to the Durham Police Department.

The first was reported around 5 p.m. on Briar Rose Lane in northern Durham when a man outside was seriously injured by another male who approached and shot him, police stated in a news release. The suspects fled in an old, damaged white car, the release stated.

The second was reported around 6:45 p.m. when a man was shot in the arm during an attempted carjacking on Shannon Road in southwest Durham, the release stated. Three suspects fled from the scene.

The third was reported at 12:06 a.m. Monday when a man getting out of a car on Liberty Street near downtown was shot in the ankle, the release stated.

Aggravated assaults, shooting up in Durham

There has been a large increase in aggravated assaults involving firearms, which includes non-fatal shootings, in Durham this year.

As of Oct 3, there had been 421 reported incidents, compared to 286 incidents in 2019 and 219 in 2018.

“This is not unique to Durham,” Police Chief C.J. Davis said on CityLife, the city’s public affairs show, last week. “It’s unique to Durham in the sense that that our communities have not seen such an uptick in a while.”

Davis said the pandemic, young people being out of school and jail protocols that are changing who is incarcerated have created an environment for gangs to “wreak havoc.”

Individuals who are members of gangs are shooting at each other no matter where they are, she said, instead of protecting and fighting on a particular turf.

“This activity creates an unsafe environment for other individuals that are just moving about their normal daily life, just sitting in a car at a traffic light or on their front porch,” Davis said.

Many of the guns used in these shootings have been stolen from legal gun owners, she said. “At least 40% that we retrieve, and those are the ones that we actually get off the street,” she said.

This story was originally published October 19, 2020 at 6:30 PM.