7 people shot, one dead, in 24 hours in Durham. City ‘deeply regrets’ 911 delays.
Tanya Kelley was inside when the rapid-fire bullets started pinging off the metal railings outside her McDougald Terrace apartment Wednesday night.
“Ping, ping, ping,” she said.
Bullets hit her door, her air-conditioning unit on the second floor and a woman on her front porch.
“She said, ‘Oh my leg!’“ Kelley said.
As the barrage continued, children along the street screamed.
“The kind of scream that makes your soul shake,” Kelley said.
“The screams were everywhere,” she said. “Up and down the street because they just went through and shot up anything they could shoot up.”
Kelley’s apartment sits near the corner of Wabash Street and Ridgeway Avenue, where police say four people were shot around 9:30 p.m.
A woman and two men were taken to the hospital.
Larry Wynne Jackson Jr., one of those shot, died a short time later, according to a Durham Police Department new release.
The woman on Kelley’s porch was grazed by a bullet on her foot and treated at the apartment complex.
A few minutes later, officers responded to another shooting on the 1000 block of Linwood Avenue.
One man was taken to the hospital after police found him wounded in a car. A woman dropped off at the emergency room with a gunshot wound told police she had been in the car with him, the release stated.
Around 4 p.m. Thursday, a woman was taken to the hospital with serious injuries after she was shot while driving and crashed a car on the 1400 block of Ridgeway Avenue, according to police.
Police reported no arrests or suspects as of Thursday evening and said they did not know if the shootings were related. The three shooting locations are all roughly within a mile of each other.
As of Aug. 14, the latest statistics available, 158 people had been shot in Durham this year.
Of those, 26 people had died.
‘Seeing people falling’
Ashley Canady was a few steps in front of her porch when she heard shots ringing out off of Wabash Street, about 15 steps away.
“It was just like they never stopped,” said Canady, president of McDougald Terrace’s Resident Council.
Like her, many people were outside, sitting on their porches, walking home from the store and hanging in their yards and by their cars, she said.
Then the muggy August evening became mayhem, she said.
“All you heard was screaming and yelling and seeing people falling,” she said. “It was like a scene from a movie.”
Canady was scrambling and panicking, trying to get children inside and making sure they weren’t hurt.
When she stepped back outside, she heard someone calling her. First, she saw a woman who had been shot by the corner. She pointed to a man who Canady thought was on the ground working on his car, but then realized had also been shot.
Canady applied pressure to his wounds and told him to “stay with us,” she said. He grabbed her arm and gasped for air.
Called 911 six times
Meanwhile, Canady and others had started calling 911.
She called six times and kept getting a recording, she said. When she finally got through, the man told her it was the first he had heard of the shooting, she said.
After the gunfire, residents searched for victims and grabbed towels to apply to people’s wounds.
“I am proud of my community,” Canady said. “The community was the first responders last night.”
In a statement, the city said it “deeply regrets” difficulties that 911 callers had trying to report the shootings.
The 911 center received 81 calls in 30 minutes, it stated.
“Any time the center receives heavy volumes of calls like these, callers may experience delays but should stay on the line and their call will be answered,” the statement said.
In addition, the statement said, Durham no longer has a recording that a 911 caller would receive. The city is researching the concerns, it states.
Earlier this month a Durham man dialed 911 four times, and his wife dialed three times, after they saw strangers trying to break into their car, according to phone records the man provided to The News & Observer.
Until recently, Durham had been routing nearly 1 in 10 of its 911 calls to Raleigh because it did not have enough operators.
A city official said Thursday there were 25 vacancies out of 60 full-time positions in the 911 operations staff. The N&O asked for an update Thursday morning but did not receive the information by the print deadline for this story.
In an open letter Wednesday, the Durham Emergency Communications Center said it is recruiting trained call takers, filling shifts by offering overtime and turning to administrative staff to fill the gaps.
“As we work to improve, we urge 911 callers to not hang up,” the letter stated. “Hanging up and calling back puts you further back in the call queue. Please wait and your call will be answered as quickly and efficiently as possible.”
Canady said the city needs to move more quickly.
“If y’all can come up with money for sidewalks and a bunch of other foolishness, you can come up with money to get this 911 center operational,” she said.
“There is no excuse for it. ... I feel like nothing is ever going to get done until it starts hitting their front doors,” she said.
Shootings down, deaths up
As of Aug. 14, police had investigated 497 shooting incidents, according to the Police Department’s Crime Analysis Unit.
A total of 158 people had been shot this year, compared to 183 people shot last year by that time.
Those numbers are up significantly from 2019, when 90 people had been shot in Durham by that date
Twenty-six people have died from shootings this year. That’s up from 20 people by the same time last year and 21 the year before that.
In a news release, interim Police Chief Shari Montgomery asked for the public’s help in solving the shootings.
“We in the Durham Police Department refuse to accept this as normal, and we remain committed to work tirelessly to investigate these violent acts and arrest those involved,” she said in the release.
The N&O asked to speak with Montgomery on Thursday, but a spokesperson said she was unavailable.
In an email, police spokesperson Kammie Michael provided information on what police are doing to reduce shootings. Among other steps:
▪ Last fall, the department created a Violent Crime Unit, which works within the department and with other agencies on gun violence.
▪ The Intelligence and Gang units identify gangs, gang members and trends, “since gang activity does account for some of our gun crime,” the email stated.
▪ The department also shifts resources to put additional officers on patrol in identified areas, which the department said speeds response time to violent incidents.
At a City Council meeting Thursday, council member Mark-Anthony Middleton expressed concern about the latest shootings.
“I used to worry that the narrative of gun violence in our city would eclipse our narrative of a city on the rise. I am not too fearful of that any longer,” he said. “What I am fearful of now is that we are getting along just fine now while people are getting shot.”
Police can’t solve the problem on their own, he later added, cautioning residents, particularly Black and brown constituents, “to be careful that [they] do not allow business as usual.”
Second shooting in recent months
Wednesday night was the second time Kelley’s apartment had been hit by bullets in recent months.
The last time, she said, she had let her guard down and let her grandchildren, 5 and 6, continue to play outside with the other children.
“As I was dragging the chair out, somebody came around the corner and started shooting,” she said.
Kelley pushed her granddaughter in, she said and grabbed her grandson.
“As we were coming in, the bullets were flying, hitting people’s cars,” and her air-conditioner, causing damage that was just recently repaired.
The bus stop
People shouldn’t have to live like prisoners inside their homes, Kelley said. People are scared to grill outside, let their children play outside or walk to the store after dark.
Kelley said she’s constantly looking for cars from which bullets might fly.
“It will be nice cars that come through and do it,” she said. “Beat up cars that come through. We don’t know. So you have to watch it, The whole time you are out here just looking, looking, looking.”
Kelley and Canady said they are most concerned about the children and how this could affect their school year.
Shootings are frequent at the corner where the man was killed Wednesday, which is also a school bus stop, Kelley said.
Kelley, who witnessed a killing just after she moved in three years ago, wondered how many more times kids will see people get shot or walk past bodies, blood stains or evidence markers to the bus stop.
”These children have to see these things, and how you want them to act human when they see this all night long?” she asked. “Somebody has got to do something. If we don’t do something, we are going to have another generation of angry people.”
Police ask anyone with information on the Wabash Street shooting to call 919-560-4440, ext. 29532. Anyone with information on the Linwood Avenue shooting is asked to call 919-560-4440, ext. 29537. People can also call CrimeStoppers at 919-683-1200.
Staff writer Penelope Blackwell contributed to this report.
This story was originally published August 19, 2021 at 8:27 AM.